Page 5126 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 12 December 1990
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patients with multiple problems, whose treatment under the present arrangements, where specialist services are split between different sites, is less than optimal. The Government also has a major commitment to improve community based health services and public health services targeted at prevention and the provision of a healthy environment for the ACT. Those things also, it seems to me, are served by these Bills.
By establishing this Board of Health that is stronger than the previous Interim Hospitals Board, the Government has brought together people with solid experience in a range of business and health-related areas. Mrs Nolan has clearly indicated the backgrounds and expertise of the members. The board will provide a mechanism for good management at high levels of accountability across the whole range of health services in Canberra, and will ensure a sound coordination and integration of services. Mr Berry himself acknowledged, while in government, that there is a problem with integrating what were hospital services with what were other health services in the ACT. There are gaps through which people can fall and through which services as a whole can fall, and it is important to integrate those services properly. This Government, rather than undermining or rejecting the concept that was embodied in the previous Interim Hospitals Board, has enhanced that concept by embracing all health services in the Territory under a single board. We have not left one particular area out in the cold; we have not decided to split things up officially. Health is a holistic consideration. It is important to see health services provided at all levels, or as many levels as possible, in a single light, rather than to treat them as responsibilities of different bodies and, by doing so, possibly to alienate those services from their best employment.
For example, to have one body administering baby health centres and another body administering hospitals in which babies are born is, in my view, not sensible. It makes sense to integrate these services under a single board. Mr Berry himself attempted to do something of that kind by establishing, I think, a community health service board, or some such body, when he was in the dying days of the Follett Government. For that reason, I think that members on all sides of this chamber should strongly support the thrust of this legislation.
These Bills are designed to give the board teeth and to establish a base in legislation through which health services can be properly planned and managed with a high level of public accountability. To do this, the board has to have powers which enable it to control the resources, both financial and human, needed to provide high quality health services. It requires appropriate employment panels and financial arrangements, and these are provided for in this legislation.
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