Page 3052 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 11 September 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I turn to public hospitals. The principal hospital redevelopment will not achieve net recurrent savings in 1990-91. This is because there are significant one-off costs associated with a project of this magnitude. In particular, when moving services between the three hospitals some overlap is inevitable, and indeed essential if the welfare of patients is to be safeguarded. As well, the physical relocation costs are estimated to be $1m in 1990-91. However, savings will be significant in later years. The principal hospital steering committee last year estimated them to be $8.5m a year. Because of the expiry of the Commonwealth's funding guarantee in June 1991, action to achieve these savings must proceed quickly. All acute hospital services will be consolidated on the Woden Valley and Calvary sites by the end of 1991.
Calvary Hospital has now agreed to introduce Public Service Act employment, and this will ensure that full staff mobility is available within the ACT public hospital sector. Calvary Hospital will open the first 57 additional beds beginning this month. An equivalent number of beds will close simultaneously at Royal Canberra and Woden Valley, to release the resources needed at Calvary. Overall bed numbers will be maintained in this transfer. Mr Berry will be interested to know that the overall bed numbers will be maintained in this transfer.
Mr Berry: At what level?
MR KAINE: At the existing level. A second 57 beds will be available at Calvary after the Christmas-New Year break. The redevelopment of the hospital system, while providing exciting opportunities for enhancing service delivery, will place pressure on staff and the community. There is no alternative to these changes if we are to maintain and enhance quality health services within the ACT's resources. I welcome the cooperation being freely offered by the many parties to the changes and I look forward to a significant improvement in services with only the minimum of disruption that inevitably accompanies change of this magnitude.
I turn now to technical and further education. An area of significant overfunding identified by the Grants Commission in its last report was technical and further education. Following the problems caused by expenditure cuts to the Institute of TAFE in 1989-90 - the ramifications of which were clearly not thought through by the previous Government - I set up a working party to review the provision and funding of TAFE services.
One of the working party's major recommendations, which has been accepted by the Government, was to establish a three-year funding arrangement for the Institute. The agreement aims to provide TAFE with better capacity and certainty to tailor its courses over this longer time frame while maintaining its educational load in public access courses. At the same time, the level of government support will be
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .