E-Petition

The Petition of citizens of Queensland draws to the attention of the House the serious and escalating deterioration in health service standards across Queensland Health and its Hospital and Health Services. 

Communities throughout the State are experiencing unsafe clinical workloads, critical shortages of doctors and nurses, withdrawal or downgrading of essential services, excessive treatment delays and systemic failures in patient safety and governance.

It is your petitioners' view that despite repeated warnings from frontline clinicians, community representatives and professional bodies, the Health Minister Tim Nicholls, the Director-General of Queensland Health and senior Queensland Health executives have failed to take effective action to restore safe and lawful health service delivery. These failures have caused preventable harm to patients, unacceptable risks to staff and widespread loss of public confidence in the integrity of Queensland Health. 

Further, the petitioners note that in some circumstance, such failures may amount to breaches of the Queensland Criminal Code, including: 

• Section 92 – Abuse of Office;
• Section 92A – Misconduct in Public Office;
• Section 200 – Refusal or Neglect to Perform a Duty, where senior public officers have acted or failed to act in ways that are unlawful and thereby contributing to the deterioration of essential health services and patient safety. 

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to:

1. Establish a Commission of Inquiry into systemic failures across Queensland Health.
2. Implement immediate measures to restore safe staffing, service quality and clinical governance.
3. Refer relevant conduct to the Queensland Police Service for assessment of possible criminal offences under the Criminal Code.