Page 979 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 1990
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Mr Berry: Do you support the motion or not?
MR HUMPHRIES: To answer Mr Berry's question, yes, the Alliance Government will be supporting the motion that Mr Berry has put forward. However, it will be adding other words which clearly indicate the true position in this regard. Everything Mr Berry has said certainly indicates strong support for the position the Government has taken and I welcome that. However, it is worth noting that a number of other things have not been said by Mr Berry. I will refer to the amendment that I have moved in respect of this. I have circulated that amendment and I will be speaking to that shortly.
The Alliance Government is committed to the provision of a range of high quality obstetrics services which will cater for the needs of women across the range from low to high risk. I do not need to mention the value of the principal hospital concept in this regard; the principal hospital will be important in providing that particular care for high risk women. There are also the other options developed and announced by the Government yesterday which cater for women in the low risk category. I will come back to them in a moment.
There is already a high quality obstetric service available in Canberra. There are presently about 122 obstetric beds available in our three public hospitals. Here is a point Mr Berry has missed: there are 122 obstetric beds available in our three public hospitals but there are none in private hospitals, none whatever.
The choice in the public hospitals provides a variety of style and philosophy which meets the needs of most clients. The variety available in our public hospital system is very important and I think Mr Berry would support that, but Mr Berry cannot seriously argue that women in the ACT should not have the option of birth in a private facility. Surely Mr Berry will not rise in this place and say that women should not have the right to obstetric services in private facilities, and yet that is the import of what he has been saying to us today. He is suggesting, I suppose, that transferring some of those public beds to private facilities will remove the availability of those beds from the public sector and women in the ACT will not be able to give birth in public facilities. That is simply utter nonsense.
I want to give Mr Berry some figures he might like to ponder about. I mentioned that there were 122 obstetric beds available in our three public hospitals. Let us assume that each person who uses those beds uses them for a whole week. That is quite a long time; the average time is considerably less than that. Let us assume it is for a whole week, then 52 weeks x 122 equals 6,344 clients, patients, women who can be accommodated in our public hospital system at the moment. How many births are there
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