Page 1641 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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Mr De Domenico: And in Belconnen as well.
MR CONNOLLY: And in Belconnen. The other thing it ignores is that the government health centres are not there just because they provide access to a GP. If all the government health centres did was provide access to a salaried GP who bulkbilled, there would be no reason to continue that service. It would be purely a duplication of what is available in the private sector and the Government would see no justification for keeping it.
But, of course, government health centres do a lot more than that. They provide a range of ancillary professional health care services not provided in the private sector, working under the Labor Government's Medicare principles, working under that system that you people went to the people of Australia last year trying to get rid of. You learnt the lesson of your lives, and never again will the Liberal Party, I suspect, try to have a go at Medicare, because the people of Australia like Medicare and want it to continue. What Medicare does not provide through the private sector is those ancillary professional health care services - the nursing sisters, the immunisation clinics, the podiatrists - provided through our government health centres. So, regardless of whether there are three or five government salaried GPs in a government health clinic, there are other facilities.
The other issue that Mrs Carnell raises is, "Shock, horror! Why do you not allow private general practitioners to rent space in the government health clinics?". We do, at Kippax. At Narrabundah, which is my local health centre - it would be Mrs Carnell's local health centre too - for some time now there has been a GP renting space, and I am unaware of any additional proposals. When I met with the College of General Practitioners, I said, "That has been the practice for some time. If you have any interest and if there are any proposals, we would be interested to see them". But, given that the private sector has established these quite extensive extended hours clinics in Tuggeranong, I am not sure that there would be a demand for government services. But, if there is such as demand, people should approach government. I discussed that with the College of General Practitioners weeks before Mr De Domenico and Mr Kaine put out their press release. It is not a big issue. (Extension of time granted)
The other issue that Mrs Carnell kept going back to was that all our problems could be solved if we had the Port Macquarie model of a public-private hospital. It is clearly not so simple. I am unaware of any demand for such a facility in the ACT, given that we have invested public funds to upgrade the infrastructure at Woden Valley and Calvary, as opposed to - - -
Mrs Carnell: You are not aware of a demand for a cardiac surgery unit?
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