Page 2662 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
facilities. Only last May or June, as I recall, I opened a large new wing at that hospital providing another 30 or so beds. If there is no demand for private hospital beds, what were they doing opening another 30 beds at John James? Clearly, there is demand. There is interest in doing that.
If Mr Berry had allowed the process of a private hospital in Belconnen to go through to the end of its normal course, he would have seen that demand. For ideological reasons Mr Berry decided that there was no case for proceeding with a private hospital, and that is disgraceful. The people in the ACT who use private hospital facilities - and there are a number who do so - are very poorly served by this Government's decision.
It is regrettable that we have seen a decision by this Government apparently to phase out the name "Royal Canberra Hospital". That is a name with some history in this Territory. It has some integrity and tradition attached to it. It is sad that it should be abolished by this Government. Describing a hospital as the Woden Valley Hospital is a purely descriptive title. It describes its location. As the principal hospital of the Territory, it is not properly described as just the hospital serving the Woden Valley. It does much more than that. It is the principal hospital for the whole Territory and it ought to have a name which reflects that fact.
As Mr Duby acknowledged earlier on, there are many casualties from this decision of the Government. The people who believed this Government when it said that it would reopen the hospital have been deceived. Other casualties are those who expected that other things would happen, for example, that a hospice would proceed quickly under this Government. That is not to be the case. We have seen it put back by this Government, if not entirely shelved. We hear that at some point in the future it is to go on the forward plan for the Acton site.
I am quite surprised by that. I took considerable advice from people concerned with the provision of hospices elsewhere in this country and I was assured that there was no way a hospice for the terminally ill ought to be separated from a functioning hospital. That is why the Alliance Government decided that the hospice was most appropriately located on a site such as Calvary. Yet Mr Berry's animosity towards the private sector and even towards suppliers of public hospital facilities is such that he is now going to say that we cannot afford to have a hospice on that site. That is also extremely regrettable.
Fast-tracking was not designed to cost money; it was designed to save money, and it still would save money if Mr Berry had allowed the process to proceed. I am not convinced that Mr Berry is not going to continue to fast-track this proposal. Mr Berry is short of money and he knows that fast-tracking is a very good way of finding money in the system. It brings on track, sooner than would
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .