Page 993 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 1990
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actively considering the establishment of a dementia centre at the place. Who knows, the way she spoke today I think she is a candidate to be a patient there.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order. Withdraw that, Mr Duby.
MR DUBY: I withdraw that. As has been pointed out, I am certainly not medically qualified.
There is absolutely no question about the fact that this particular motion is not, as Mr Moore tried to point out, a bipartisan motion at all. The clear implication of this motion is that this Government is removing obstetric beds from the public sector and therefore limiting options to ACT women. It has been pointed out time and time again, so I shall not bore the Assembly by going through it again, that there are no proposals whatsoever, no plans to reduce the number of public obstetric beds in the ACT.
Mr Moore: Just their location.
MR DUBY: There has been an interjection, "Just our locations", whatever that is supposed to mean.
Mr Moore: Just their location.
MR DUBY: "Just their location" - by all means. The community cannot afford to maintain the facilities of Royal Canberra Hospital. The facilities will be removed to other locations; namely, the Woden Valley site and Calvary Hospital will be upgraded to 300 beds. There is no question about that but I repeat, this motion says that there would be a removal of obstetric beds from the public sector. Such is not the case. It is as simple as that, and I do not know when you are going to take the wax out of your ears and listen to what people say, instead of putting out scaremongering tactics that really do get people in the community concerned.
Anyway, that is the long and short of it, to be honest. I simply had to respond to those allegations from Mrs Grassby that - as she was saying - "our friends" were going to develop the site of Acton Peninsula. Such is not the case. The site is going to be retained completely for community purposes, and I think that should be the end of the matter.
DR KINLOCH (11.35): Mr Speaker, I am not a member of the Catholic Church and therefore I am not speaking in any partisan way, but I would just like to raise some doubts about one comment that was made earlier today. Whatever may have been the case decades ago, I think we should be very careful indeed in what we say about hospital practices in Catholic hospitals. I have some direct knowledge of this, and I do believe that the de facto reality of what happens in Catholic hospitals vis-a-vis births does not fit the rather older cliched view of what the Catholic Church may once have perhaps have regarded as proper. I do not wish to give details for obvious reasons, but I do know of
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