Page 2574 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 15 November 1989
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however, is cleaned by staff who are, I assume, mostly members of the Hospital Employees Federation. The cost of cleaning Woden Valley Hospital per year is $18 a square metre. The cost of cleaning Royal Canberra Hospital per year is $32 a square metre.
Minister Grassby has said in this place on occasions that she opposes the idea of privatising: privatising is wrong, we must not privatise. Minister, if we privatise cleaning services in the ACT hospital system we are going to save hundreds of thousands of dollars per year for the people of the ACT, the people whom you and your colleague the Minister for Health are supposed to be looking after. But are you going to do that? I very much doubt it. Of course Royal Canberra is an older hospital than Woden Valley, which may account for some of that difference, but by no means all.
Let us look at the cost per bed day for 1987-88 across the three hospitals in the ACT. These are slightly more current figures. And this, I think, bears on the argument that somehow Calvary should be taken into account and should have its head as much on the chopping block as other hospitals. The cost per bed day at Royal Canberra Hospital is $428. At Woden Valley Hospital it is $340. At Calvary it is only $264. To my knowledge, Calvary Hospital is much more efficient than either of the other two, and in my view the reason is simply, among other things, that it is run privately and has the additional potential which private operation gives it.
Mr Speaker, I cannot complete this debate without quoting from the editorial of the Canberra Times of 9 November. This is one of the most damning indictments that I have ever read of any Minister of any government. It says:
The ACT Minister for Health, Wayne Berry, is showing every sign that he lacks the experience and the guts to handle the crisis in the ACT health system. He simply will not make the hard decisions. And when the unpalatable options are put before him, he runs away from them, thinking that the crisis will go away. Now he is thinking about doing away with the board system when the interim ACT Hospital Board's term expires in December. He appears not to like the board's persistence in giving him the bad news.
It goes on further:
Mr Berry must make an attack on work practices, contract out some services, get improved efficiency (necessarily involving staff cuts) in administrative and non-clinical services, and rationalise clinical services to particular hospitals. He must resist the pressure to find cost savings by reducing clinical services. To do the latter would be an abrogation of his public duty.
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