Page 1639 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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that will provide first-rate public health care. It is already providing absolutely first-rate public health care. It has moved the quantum, as a result of decisions of this Government, to become a full-scale teaching hospital, with the clinical school with the University of Sydney. We also have operating complementary to that the not-for-profit system at John James and Calvary.
Mrs Carnell said that the private system globally has a lower bed cost than the public system and that, therefore, public hospitals must be better, must be more efficient. Of course, they have a lower bed cost because, despite the fact that some private hospitals do quite intensive work and that there are private cardiac facilities in Sydney serving a community of about six million, by and large the private system - the not-for-profit and for-profit private system - does the simpler end of surgery. That is not a criticism of what they do. What they do they do very well. But in this town, as in others, by and large they do the less complex procedures. That was made abundantly clear with the decision and the announcement concerning the obstetrics facility at John James. There will be very close working relationships between that facility and Woden with the appointment of a professor of obstetrics at Woden. It is clearly understood that when something goes as it should not, when things do not operate as they should, the ambulance with the intensive care crib facility will front at John James and in five minutes it will be across to Woden Valley - the major public trauma hospital, the major public teaching hospital - for the intensive work.
This happens now at Goulburn Base Hospital, Yass and Queanbeyan or the private facilities in regional New South Wales. When things get too complex, patients come to Canberra. Woden Valley Hospital takes the more complex cases when things do not go as they should. That is as it should work. That is a very sensible way for the system to operate. It avoids duplication; it centres intensive work at the major trauma hospital. Just as Woden Valley receives from the private system in the ACT, so it receives from the public system around regional New South Wales. The cases that come to Canberra are, by and large, the more complex cases. So we are developing a balance there.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to move beyond the hospital system and take some heed of what Mrs Carnell was saying about the community medical centres. I must say that I was surprised at some of the hysteria in the press release yesterday from Mr Kaine and Mr De Domenico, who were saying, "Shock, horror! Residents of Tuggeranong are missing out on medical treatment because there are only three doctors - taking into account the part-timers - at Tuggeranong and there are 16 in Belconnen". There is a certain Tuggeranongcentricity. They tend to take the view that everything that is not in Tuggeranong is in Belconnen. There is the rest of Canberra, as opposed to Tuggeranong. They were saying, "Shock, horror! Tuggeranong people are being denied medical services because there are only three doctors". I thought to myself, "My goodness! What has happened to the Liberal Party? Have they decided that unless it is socialised medicine you do not have access to medical facilities?. Have they suddenly undergone an even more peculiar conversion on the road to Damascus and said that unless you can get into the government clinic and see a government doctor you cannot see a doctor?".
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