Charlton Hart: Premier, apologise for calling health system ‘world-class’ and hold an independent inquiry

The desperate, pain-filled screams of the strongest man I know will haunt me for the rest of my days. At 2:13 am on Monday, my dad, Keith, got up for the toilet. It’s a journey he’s made a million times, but this one ended in disaster. He slipped, and the metal rod from a previous hip replacement shattered his femur. The pain was instantaneous and absolute. “I can’t move my leg! I can’t move my leg! Charlton I’m f...ed! Please help me, I’m in so much pain!! PLEASE! PLEASE! HELP ME!” I have never heard my father, a man of immense strength and stoicism, cry out like that. On the floor, paralysed by pain and petrified he would never walk again, he begged for help. My own shock and fear quickly turned to anger as I dialled triple-0. “The crew have been notified,” the operator repeated, unable to tell me if an ambulance was even on its way or how far off it would be. They arrived within 15 minutes. The two attending paramedics were everything you could hope for: caring and deeply empathetic. They were, in words, world-class. Gently administering medication and, with raw honesty, preparing us for the ordeal ahead. Unable to get a second crew, they enlisted my sister and I to help carry Dad on a canvas stretcher to the ambulance. “I won’t be offended if you swear,” one of them, Adam, told Dad. “That’s perfectly normal.” These paramedics are the frontline heroes Premier Roger Cook likes to hide behind when he describes our health system. But the world-class care ended the moment Dad was wheeled through the doors of Joondalup Hospital. And just to be clear — the doctors and nurses were top-notch. Dad arrived at about 4.30am on Monday. He was left, drugged and in agony, on a stretcher and tossed away in a room until Tuesday evening—a staggering 37 hours—waiting for a theatre to become available for “urgent” surgery. The pain was so severe he couldn’t sleep. Fentanyl wasn’t enough to knock him out. He’d have walked out of the hospital if he could. When I visited him after work, he was delirious from sleep deprivation and a cocktail of powerful painkillers. His injured leg, which was stabilised on arrival, had been left to twist sideways in a sight that made my stomach churn. He couldn’t eat, told to continue fasting for that “urgent” surgery that continued to be delayed. The staff, when we could find them, were apologetic but blunt: it’s a lack of resources, not enough theatres, and overwhelming demand. We were told by a nurse dad had been left off the surgery list - forgotten in the backlog and, if it wasn’t for her attention he might have been left waiting. Late on Tuesday - he was taken in for operation. It was an immense sense of relief that he wouldn’t be waiting another day . . . to spend his 65th birthday under the knife. He was lucky in some respects. The man in the bed next to him spent three days fasting for his “urgent” surgery. After such a long delay he’s not sure whether he’ll be able to walk properly again. This is the reality of the health system you preside over, Mr Cook. It’s why your insistence that it’s “world-class” is not just wrong, it is an insult to every single taxpayer who has been failed by it. When confronted in Parliament over the shambles, you accused the opposition of a scare campaign: “Don’t go to hospital, don’t go to hospital, scaring West Australians.” They don’t need to scare us Premier, we’re already there. You refuse to apologise for record ambulance ramping — despite a promise to fix it a decade ago. You criticised the previous government when ramping was out of control, now, you dismiss it as a “symptom” of a national problem or a “growing economy”. You dismiss the concerns of an 84-year-old man forced to wait 11 hours in emergency, suggesting his case wasn’t a high priority. You wave away “code yellows” as a “normal part of health system,” when experts correctly identify them for what they are: A declaration the hospital has become unsafe. Stop the media stunts - refusing to read letters from the Opposition - pointing fingers at the Federal Government then flying to Canberra for a stern talk with the PM. It’s inevitably met with another piece of spin or a half-baked announcement to ride out the news cycle. We deserves honesty and accountability. Please, for my dad and the thousands of others who have, and will suffer in your hospitals, retracted your “world-class” claim and apologise. Hold an inquiry to find out why we’re in this mess and how to fix it. Please, I know you have it in you.