Page 869 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 1990
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There is obviously no service quality advantage in persisting with the three hospital system that the Commonwealth has carelessly imposed upon us and, in the current economic climate, it is clearly out of the question to commit ourselves to the additional costs of maintaining Royal Canberra at Acton, along with Calvary, particularly since this is likely to prejudice rather than enhance quality of care.
The Government has therefore decided that a comprehensive general hospital of around 300 beds will be provided at Calvary and that Royal Canberra will be transferred to the Woden Valley site to create a principal hospital of around 700 beds. This will produce the best result in terms of a quality hospital service and it offers both lower capital and recurrent costs.
Mr Speaker, while this is the option that will maximise the quality of ACT public hospital services and offers the lowest cost of any of the various options that have been carefully evaluated over the past year, its estimated cost of $154m will still have a massive impact on the ACT budget. In fact, financing such a program without substantial Commonwealth assistance will limit capital works in other areas. The Chief Minister will expand on this important issue when he delivers the Government's budget strategy statement later this week.
Today, I have outlined an extensive program to upgrade our public hospitals and improve the quality and efficiency of the services they offer. This program will produce real benefits for clients and the ACT community as a whole. The project itself will be among the largest and most exciting hospital redevelopment schemes ever seen in Australia and it will present a significant boost to employment in the building industry in the Territory.
However, as is the case with all such major developments, some people will be asked to confront greater change than others. This will be so for the staff of our public hospitals, particularly Royal Canberra. The Government will guarantee absolute preference of employment for all staff of our public hospitals as services are progressively moved to new locations. There will be an overall reduction in staff numbers as we move to a more efficient and better public hospital system. This reduction will largely be met by natural attrition and redeployment. Where necessary, the Government will offer appropriate voluntary redundancy arrangements. There will be no compulsory separations - that is, no one will be sacked.
In the planning of the redevelopment program and in the progressive introduction of change, trade unions and staff will be fully consulted before decisions are made about implementation. The Government will invite the ACT Trades and Labour Council, for example, to secure representation on the body soon to be appointed to oversight on the
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