Page 4531 - Week 15 - Thursday, 22 November 1990
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Mr Speaker, one thing that has been a focal point in the debate over hospital services in the ACT has been the issue of a private hospital. In the Estimates Committee it was said at first that there was a demand for a second private hospital in Canberra. Of course, there was no argument to support that proposition. The Minister relied on some fairly ordinary supporting evidence, and I will come to that later. But it is clear that there is little need for extra private beds in the ACT. The health mafia from New South Wales might well argue that there should be an expansion of private hospital beds in the ACT and the Minister might endorse that claim, but you only have to look at some of the examples in the Territory to see that there is no demand for private hospital beds. For example, Calvary Hospital had an allocation of 50 or so beds some time ago; they were never opened, and it has never been able to fill the private beds that it does operate. I understand that they are pleased to get rid of the private beds in that hospital and would prefer to operate as a public hospital.
There is no demand for private beds. Yet this Government bases its expansion of the private sector on some elusive demand. It is not there. There is no demand, but there is a demonstrated demand for public hospital beds, Chief Minister. I am sorry to see that the Minister is out of the chamber - or almost out of the chamber - because that demonstration of the need for public beds in the Territory shows up very clearly in the facts which the Government has supplied in relation to waiting lists for elective surgery in our hospitals. They are at their highest rate for many years, for four or five years; in fact, they are 40 per cent over what they were at this time last year. Of course, the Government is getting very nervous about that and the Minister is trying hard to hose it down and cover it up. But it will not go away while ever those waiting lists keep emerging and the victims of the system keep complaining about the pain and suffering they are going through because of those waiting lists.
The Minister argues - listen to this one - that the need for a private hospital is demonstrated by what could only be described as a meagre, above average private insurance rate in the ACT. That is not backed up by any evidence. In the Estimates Committee hearings he was asked for the waiting lists for private hospitals; but he did not have them, he had not considered them.
Mr Humphries: They are not available.
MR BERRY: That is right. How on earth can you argue that there is a demand for private hospital beds if you cannot prove the demand?
Mr Humphries: Because they seek to build more private hospital beds and they have asked to build them.
MR BERRY: They do not open the ones they have.
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