The lockdown observance really showed that nothing will stop us from honouring the WW1 soldiers. It was a memorable Anzac Day

PRESIDENT of the Nurse Professional Association of Queensland, Phil Tsingos, says the State Government is responsible for a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) from private hospitals.

This means elective surgeries can’t be done and that casual nurses are still out of work.

On April 21 the Australian Government, in partnership with the states and private hospital sector, announced the resumption of elective surgeries “in a safe and carefully considered way”.

That’s all dandy, but according to Mr Tsingos it hasn’t happened – at least to any great degree – simply because Queensland Health is not sharing the largesse it has of goggles, gowns and masks with the privates. He said it was stockpiling PPE for the public hospitals.

Before I go any further, I want to point out that I contacted Queensland Health about this.

Their response was that Queensland Health does not supply PPE to private hospitals.

The Queensland Health spokesperson said private hospitals had their own supply chains and sourced their own PPE. The spokesperson said there had been worldwide disruption to medical

PPE supply chains.

When I went back and put this to Mr Tsingos, he said this was correct, but there was more to the story. He said that because the Federal Government had enacted the rarely used Biosecurity Act in March, the state was able to take PPE from private hospitals.

He said the state had also cornered the PPE supply chain, leaving little for the private hospital sector.

Without an adequate supply of this personal protective equipment, the private hospitals can’t get back to the number of elective surgical procedures they were doing prepandemic.

“Queensland Health has all the stock and is not releasing it to private hospitals,” Mr Tsingos said.

One private hospital nurse in Townsville told me that each day they were counting how much PPE they had in order to determine what operations they could and couldn’t perform.

Mr Tsingos says there are people in Townsville and all over Queensland in pain at home because they cannot get elective surgeries done in private hospitals.

Public hospitals on their own don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping up with surgery demands.

This is why the private hospital sector exists. It soaks up that demand and lets the public sector get on with the great job it was designed to do.

But if the private hospitals can’t access sufficient quantities of PPE, they can’t do their job and the surgery lists back up … and up.

It’s a catch-22.

“Queensland’s surgical waiting lists cannot be brought down without the help of the private hospitals, but these same private hospitals can’t operate if they don’t have PPE,” Mr Tsingos said.

He cited one example of how well the private sector could help reduce waiting lists: “In the same eight-hour period, an interventional cardiologist will do 17 angiograms in the private sector compared to four in the public.”

Lockdown in paradise

TOWNSVILLE veterinarians John ‘Jappy’ and Sally-anne Potter are in COVID-19 lockdown in perhaps the most beautiful place on the planet, Cook’s Bay on the island of Moorea in French Polynesia.

There they are right now, anchored amidst natural beauty so far-fetched it almost seems to be not of this world. They have been in lockdown since March 21.

The rules are strict. They can’t move their 50-foot mono-hull yacht Capall Mara (Irish Gaelic for seahorse) and – this must be the hardest thing – they are prohibited from snorkelling, diving, fishing and swimming. Not being able to jump overboard and cool off must be terribly hard to resist.

You’d have to wonder why they can’t swim and snorkel. Some pen pusher in an office must have decreed that “if I can’t do it, neither can they”. The formerly landlubbing vets sailed out of Townsville in April 2005 and have been crossing the seven seas ever since.

How have the Potters been putting in their lockdown time? Sally-anne told me this week they could go to the local supermarket via their dinghy, but had to observe strict social-distancing regulations.

A mad-keen golfer, John ordered a book and video on how to improve his golf swing. He has no clubs on the Capall Mara, but practises on the stern with the boat hook.

Neighbouring sailors in lockdown are greatly amused.

There has only been one crisis thus far. This was when there was a ban on booze sales and Jappy was down to his last six pack. Mercifully, the bottlos reopened just in time.

While on the subject of Cook’s Bay and Captain James Cook, it is worth remembering that 250 years ago on Wednesday – April 29, 1770 – the great mariner himself sailed into Botany Bay aboard the 129-foot Endeavour.

Sally-anne told me that Cook sailed to Tahiti (French Polynesia) in 1769 to “observe the transit of Venus”, as you do. He named Venus Point and went to Moorea, where the Potters are now enjoying their enforced COVID-19 lifestyle.

Anyone who went aboard the replica Endeavour when it was in Townsville years ago can appreciate what it must have been like for the sailors. The crew spaces were minuscule and Cook’s cabin could scarcely accommodate a single cot. The head room was such that anyone moving about below decks was constantly hunched over.

Too many Cooks

I HEARD a good joke about Captain Cook and his snooty botanist, Sir Joseph Banks. It went like this:

Banks was constantly miffed that Cook, a commoner, named everything after himself. No matter

where they went went, if there was a cove, it would be Cook’s Cove. If there was a mountain, it would Mt Cook. There was Cook Reef, Cooktown, Cook River Cook-bloody-everything. Banks, who was discovering all sorts of botanical and zoological specimens, complained constantly to his shipmates about the injustice of it all.

One day he and Cook were wandering around the base of Mt

Cook on Magnetic Island ( pictured left) when they sa saw a bird that made a hah ha-ho-ho-ha-ha laughing so sound. It was large, br brownish and had a pr prominent beak. Banks im immediately named the bi bird the banksaburra.

The next day, when re reading Cook’s official notations, t ti h he was once again pinged off to discover that Cook had again exercised his power of veto.

Anzac Day in the bush

WASN’T Anzac Day last Saturday something special? People standing at their driveways with torches and candles. The real show-offs had portable steel fire pits which blazed away in the pre-dawn darkness.

Rather than take away from what Anzac Day really means to Australians, the lockdown observance really showed that nothing will stop us from honouring the WWI soldiers. It was a memorable Anzac Day.

What might not be widely appreciated is what the Anzac Day program broadcast on the ABC meant to people on farms and stations. Some, in really remote areas, can never get to an Anzac Day service, but this year they could mark the occasion via the radio.

Mates of mine out on a Gulf station climbed a steep hill in the dark, turned on their radio and had their own Anzac Day way out there in the Never Never.

There was the Ode, The Last Post and one minute’s silence.

When it was over they walked back down, jumped on their motorbikes and went mustering cattle. You can’t beat that.

The driveway observance is probably not something the RSL would like repeated every year because it would take people away from the nation’s cenotaphs and memorials like the Afghanistan Avenue of Honour at Yungaburra, but it would be a great thing for people living out on remote stations.

And there are other memories that should never be forgotten.

Anzac Day is a time to remember the British generals, who, at the beck and call of their lords and masters back in England, sent thousands of young Australian and New Zealand men unnecessarily to their deaths.

Here are two lines from AD Hope’s short poem, Inscription For A War, that tell this story better than anything.

“Go tell those old men, safe in bed,

We took their orders and are dead.”

Pokies’ winning hand

WITH pubs and clubs shut, cutting access to pokies and TAB, you’d think the punters might be saving some money. Apparently not.

Online gambling during the lockdown is up by 71 per cent. And if you think all those stories about people in lockdown sitting around watching the telly and getting on the turps are exaggerated, think again. Grog sales are up 35 per cent.

Louise Gary, CEO of the National Organisation for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, told me this week that alcohol advertising on social media had gone up 320 per cent during the pandemic.