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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4154 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The recommendation dealing with the numbers of patients admitted to the three private hospitals from the Canberra Hospital's accident and emergency section being monitored and that data being reported to the Assembly is, once again, a monitoring recommendation, which is always useful if we want to understand what we are doing in the community when we allow these new operations to start. The last recommendation is that protocols be developed and published concerning the roles and conduct of private and public staff in the Canberra Hospital. Obviously, that is because there was some concern expressed to the committee that there could be some kind of pressure. Basically, this is about ensuring that good practice occurs.

One of the other matters that I think need to be addressed is the cardio-thoracic unit. I support Mr Berry's concern on that. I was surprised to get different stories from the health officials and Health Care of Australia on exactly what the relationship between the two hospitals and the cardio-thoracic unit would be. What it showed very clearly was a disturbing lack of detail in the agreement. Once again, I just think that is very poor practice, because the ACT community is spending a lot of money on developing a cardio-thoracic unit in the public hospital, and we want it to be viable. I cannot understand how this kind of arrangement could have been gone into without actually going into that amount of detail beforehand.

I did learn something from being part of this committee. I think these recommendations are reasonable, if you look at them. I think Mr Berry has gone a little bit over the top in the way he has actually presented some of the recommendations. I hope that I have presented a more level-headed response. I am certainly not convinced by Mr Hird's arguments, obviously. I do look forward to seeing in the next Assembly, whoever is in government, a select committee, or some other committee, looking at commercial-in-confidence. I want to see the development of some protocols so that we know that any unfair advantage that Health Care of Australia might have because of the co-location does not unfairly disadvantage John James.

One comment I remember was that John James could have tendered for this operation but, because John James had a clear understanding of the lack of viability in this increase in private beds, they would not tender. They knew that their own facility was adequate at this point and that, if they had tendered for this new facility, the new facility would have failed or the John James facility would have failed. So, I can understand why they were very frustrated that there had not been any real needs assessment done, to begin with, to determine whether there was a capacity to take in this many extra private beds.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Minister for Health and Community Care) (6.11): I will speak briefly on this issue because I imagine that it will not get back to this Assembly with the Government's response, due to timeframes. I think one of the issues that need to be addressed here is consistency. Over the last two weeks in the Assembly, if not over the last 21/2 years, we have seen the most amazing amount of inconsistency from Mr Berry. Mr Berry, it appears, takes the approach that whatever is the most expedient line that he can take today to have a go at the Government is the one he will take.

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