Page 5125 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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MR HUMPHRIES (Minister for Health, Education and the Arts) (4.55), in reply: Mr Speaker, there is not a great deal to say about this legislation which has not already been said in the presentation speech I made some days ago. I should emphasise that the Government is committed to the development of a much better hospital system for Canberra and its surrounding regions - we must not forget that - and, as a result, it has decided to proceed with this process of establishing a stronger base for the provision of services in the ACT.
I want to answer the point made by Mr Berry that in some way the changes brought forward by the Government in this area constitute some undermining or loss of confidence in the process which we defended in opposition last year, in particular in our defence of the Interim Hospitals Board. Let me emphasise that that is not the case. The Government is strongly committed to the structure of hospital administration and, indeed, health service administration, as provided by and exemplified by the Interim Hospitals Board, as it then was. We support that concept because we see great value in having an expert and community based body of people to administer and directly deliver health services in the ACT.
That appropriate distancing of those services from government is, in my view, a good thing. Mr Moore discussed this the other day and he said that he saw two means of providing services: a centralised one, which tends to be that preferred by the Labor Party, and a less centralised one, a devolved one, which is the one preferred on this occasion by this side of the house. Mr Moore said that he was not sure which was the better system. That is obviously an issue that he will have to deal with in the course of time.
My view is very strongly that the community is better off when the Government is put at some distance from the provision of those services. Government is a large, sometimes inaccessible kind of organisation. I believe that for governments to, in a sense, give back to the community some responsibility for the management of health services, and indeed for other things, is an important step in understanding that communities have an important role in these matters and can be expected to shoulder some responsibility in ensuring that health services are of a high standard. After all, the community itself is the consumer of those services.
In difficult economic circumstances the Government has committed a substantial proportion of its capital budget to the development of a principal hospital which brings together all the major specialties in the ACT hospital system on one site. This has happened because we believe that it will enhance the development of quality assurance, peer review, teaching and research and other things which underpin the achievement of high standards of clinical care. Incidentally, it will also facilitate the care of
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