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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 2640 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

a process they could not reverse, even if they wished to. It was a process dictated by the reality that that model simply did not work, that people were going elsewhere for services outside that area, and that most doctors in this situation already bulk-bill for pensioners, the unemployed and people on low incomes. Mr Speaker, I support that model. I support the model which gives access to bulk-billing for those who require it. I do not believe that we can sustain the model of our health centres into the future when we say that only 100 per cent bulk-billing doctors can occupy these centres, and only those sorts of centres can be allowed to exist in the Territory. That is nonsense.

The proof of the nonsense of that proposition is that it has been a dwindling asset since the earliest days of self-government. Ever since that time it has been acknowledged that we simply cannot get doctors to remain in those centres on those terms, and the assets of those centres have declined. When you go to one of our health centres, like the Melba Health Centre, or Narrabundah or Kippax, you notice something very striking about them. They are decaying centres. They are centres where they have dwindling resource bases; they are not particularly well patronised; people have a problem with access to the services there; and the services have been leaving those centres for some time. They are not dynamic avenues for the offering of services to the people of the Territory. Those people opposite who now attack this Government know that because they oversaw that process when they were in government.

Mr Speaker, the other point is about the outlay of centres themselves. It was supposed to be the case that the model of health centres in Belconnen was, according to Mr Connolly, the model set up by the Whitlam Government on which health centres were to be provided, presumably, across the rest of Australia under this mythical, wonderful Labor Government, but certainly within the ACT. Mr Speaker, that never happened. Belconnen was the only township in the Territory that ever had a variety of health centres, except possibly for North Canberra. Other town centres, as they were established - Woden, Weston Creek and Tuggeranong - were based on the model of having a single health centre.

The reason is that those health centres, it was realised, did not offer a particularly appropriate service in all cases; that medicine generally was offering a range of services which were matching the kind of service offered in the government owned and run health centres, it was possible to see an appropriate model offered to people by local GPs who were bulk-billing in appropriate cases and that did not require government ownership of those centres or those locations where that medicine was being offered. That is why the Government proposed, prior to the Assembly passing a motion some months ago, that we should be in the business of allowing doctors to operate those centres on a private basis, allowing them to appropriately bulk-bill pensioners and other people who were on low incomes but to charge people who were not in that position. That, Mr Speaker, is a position I strongly endorse. Indeed, I suggest that even the Federal colleagues of those opposite endorse it, as we saw when they tried to introduce the concept of copayment only a couple of years ago. Mr Speaker, we are in the position of having to make those sorts of decisions, and we see, as a result of that, a move towards these kinds of centres.

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