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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4151 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The committee also recommended that the Auditor-General examine the arrangements between the Government and Health Care of Australia, to ensure the ACT taxpayers are receiving a fair return for their investment. There is a major question at large over the use of public facilities which have been provided at public expense. Over $170m was spent in refurbishing that hospital. One of the major users now will be a private hospital next-door. That was never intended and the community were never advised of that when their taxes were used for these purposes. If it can be shown that every dollar is accounted for, fair enough; but that will require some administrative expenditure as well.

The committee accepted the view of Calvary Hospital, John James Memorial Hospital and the Royal College of Nursing that there were shortages of nursing staff in the ACT. We found that the fact that HCoA holds a contrary view implied that staff would be recruited from interstate. But there are shortages generally, I understand. Again, it goes back to the issue of whether staff will be available, where they will come from and whether it will create shortages in other hospitals. The committee also expressed some views about the presence of National Capital Private Hospital staff in accident and emergency cases. There is a major issue there. We have to make sure that nobody who is sick or injured is levered into the private hospital as a result of the hunger for business that will exist in the early stages.

There was also a critical issue about cardiac care. What a debacle! The health officials came into the inquiry saying that they were convinced that Health Care of Australia were going to cooperate with them. There was going to be some collaborative arrangement whereby they would have joint use of facilities and some patients would be in the public system and some would be in the private system. That fell apart before the committee. Health Care of Australia said they would have nothing to do with it. They made the Government and the departmental officials look like fools because they had not even stitched up an agreement on cardiac surgery before the agreement was signed. That demonstrates how much of a rush this Government was in to get it signed so that this committee could not properly examine the issue. This inquiry has discovered that the Government's approach on this whole issue has been deceptive and without care for existing businesses in the ACT. It will do nothing good for the existing private hospitals - in fact, it will damage them. The agreement has been made unfairly on the basis of inadequate consultation. I commend the report to the Assembly.

MR HIRD (5.57): At the outset, I would like to sincerely thank the secretary of the committee, Mr John Cummins, and his assistant, Kim Blackburn, and those groups who gave evidence and submissions to the select committee. I would also like to thank the other members of the committee, Mr Berry and Ms Tucker. The members of most Assembly committees I have served on have taken their political hats off and objectively considered the evidence which has come before the committees. That was not possible with this select committee. The chair made clear his dislike of the development of the private hospital both in his public comments and during the debate in the parliament before we even started to consider the evidence. This bias has strongly influenced the majority report of this select committee.

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