Page 1622 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
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quality of our public hospital system this Government, in difficult economic conditions, is prepared to commit a major sum of capital expenditure, around $154m, to upgrading the hospital system, this development including the establishment of a principal hospital on the Woden Valley site.
This bringing together of the major specialties involves transferring services from Royal Canberra Hospital to Woden Valley. Once this has taken place the economies of scale involved in providing the small number of remaining hospital beds on the Acton Peninsula will be excessively inefficient.
I pause there to reflect on the Acton Peninsula. This new proposal does not mean that in the twenty-first century there will not be the possibility of doing many things on the Acton Peninsula as our population grows - and may it grow - and indeed that would be true of our education system as well. I was particularly happy with Mr Humphries' scheme and the Alliance Government's scheme that preserves the Acton Peninsula for the future. It is not to be carved up holus-bolus for any kind of activity. It is to be preserved as an important site, and there are some excellent things happening there.
This Government has therefore determined that the Acton Peninsula will be maintained for use by other health services and that public hospital services will be provided in the ACT by a principal hospital at Woden Valley which will provide for all the community needs of people in south Canberra and also offer a higher level of specialties for all the people of Canberra. Calvary will provide for the majority of the needs of people in north Canberra.
As part of the redevelopment, the Government is committed to providing a birthing centre facility, hospice facilities and a convalescent centre. Again, parenthetically, those of us on the Social Policy Committee are particularly happy about two of those three matters that arose out of the ageing report. There was a fervent hope and wish for the hospice facility. It was a very active and committed group who were behind that and we should have it in our city. Clearly there was not any doubt that the convalescent centre would not only be good in itself - and what a wonderful site the Acton Peninsula would be for a new convalescent hospital - but that it was an effective economic activity as related to a larger hospital organisation.
The Alliance Government will also seek funding from the Commonwealth for child-care to be placed conveniently to the Woden Valley and Calvary sites and to be maintained on the Acton Peninsula. At Woden a 24-hour child-care service will be sought. All this redevelopment will also involve the provision of a 24-hour mental health crisis service at Woden. These decisions about the redevelopment of the hospital system cost significantly less than the options
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