Page 3053 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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MR MOORE (3.38): Mr Speaker, I will begin this debate by referring to the Labor Government's own document entitled "Feasibility Study for the Development of a Community Hospital, Acton Peninsula, Volume 1", July 1991, prepared by the ACT Board of Health and Richard Glenn and Associates. On page 32 of that report it states the main objective of option 4. It says:
The main objective of this Option is to use the Acton site for Medical and Surgical Hospital purposes, providing direct access to those services for the residents of inner Canberra.
The notion of a medical/surgical hospital can best be described as a hospital such as Calvary Hospital over the past few years. That is the level of hospital we are talking about with this option. The report continues:
This option also aims to ensure that the development of a Principal Hospital in the ACT, together with a Community Hospital, occurs maximising the benefits in terms of improved Hospital services for the Canberra community.
It has been the claim of the Labor Government, Mr Speaker, that when this feasibility study was done things had gone too far - thanks to Mr Humphries, as Minister - for them to be able to reverse the decision, that too much money had already been spent and there was simply no choice but to close Royal Canberra Hospital.
Mr Speaker, that simply was not true, as indicated by the very feasibility study that this Minister commissioned. Page 33 of the feasibility study indicates quite clearly what needs there would be and what measures would need to be taken if there were going to be what it refers to as "changes to the current program" to facilitate a medical/surgical hospital on the Acton Peninsula. That feasibility study states:
The implementation of this option -
the medical/surgical hospital -
would introduce a number of major changes to the current Program. In summary, they would be:
Provision of 150 beds at Acton, and the associated changes to the Transfer of Services Program (including changes to staff transfers currently planned) together with the associated planning and design work for the refurbishment of the Acton facilities.
It then refers to the scope of works to occur at what was then called the Royal Canberra Hospital South but which we understand and know best as Woden Valley Hospital, as follows:
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