Page 1645 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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In closing, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think it is a very sensible motion that Mrs Carnell has moved. It is a very factual motion. Purely and simply, it says that we welcome the fact that the Government finally, with health under the stewardship of Mr Connolly, realises that there is a very important role to be played in health delivery to all Australians by both the public sector and the private sector. That is nothing new. It has happened for years and years. It is a refreshing approach that the Government is adopting. We welcome that refreshing approach and will continue to support Mr Connolly as long as he continues to adopt that refreshing approach.
MR MOORE (11.48): I would like to raise as part of this debate the issue of why it is that we need extra hospital beds in Canberra. I am not referring to just the 50 or so beds at John James that have been approved by the Government. There has also been an indication that it may well be that other beds are needed and that the Government would consider those in a favourable light. I think that is a reasonable interpretation of what Mr Connolly said - - -
Mr Connolly: On their merits, certainly.
MR MOORE: On merit. It occurs to me that currently there is extra room at Calvary that may well come into that category. When we talk about needing 50 or 100 more beds, we cannot help wondering what it is that has caused this need for beds. We think back to a very short while ago, when we closed down an excellent hospital. We have an asset worth $100m-plus sitting on the Acton Peninsula and going to pieces.
Had we been using accounting systems similar to the ones that we looked at in New Zealand, had that asset been included as part of the whole accounting practice and given its genuine value, and had that value been incorporated into the thinking, that asset would never have been closed down. Mr Humphries would never have considered the move in the first place; and Mr Berry, on becoming Minister, would have taken that into account and would have reversed the decision that had been made by the Alliance Government. That is now history. The Royal Canberra Hospital is closed. It is clearly not going to be reopened; but, Mr Deputy Speaker, I think there are lessons for us in that. Perhaps this backflip started with the failure of the second Follett Government to reopen that hospital when it had the opportunity to do so and thereby make an appropriate contribution to public health.
Mr Connolly, as always, argued very eloquently about the position he has taken. That is probably because he has thought about it. I still believe that we must take a great deal of care to ensure that our public hospital system is not just denuded of the profitable areas. One thing that happens in a system such as the one in Port Macquarie is that the hospital clearly operates in the public health areas that are most profitable. It is easy for a private hospital to decide that it will not deal in certain areas that the public hospital system deals in. The danger of that - and I think this point was well argued by Mr Berry on innumerable occasions - is that we say that we have greater expenses in the public hospital system and we have to reach deeper and deeper into our pocket because the public hospital system is not dealing with some of the more profitable areas of medicine which really wind up compensating for those very difficult medical areas that are particularly expensive.
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