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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Tuesday, 2 March 2004) . . Page.. 490 ..

The figure is not much better for Canberra hospital. At Canberra hospital a total of 69 per cent of category 2 patients were overdue for surgery. Members should remember that Minister Corbell is concerned about waiting times for less urgent elective surgery—category 2 and category 3. So a total of 69 per cent of category 2 general surgery patients were overdue for surgery. The hospital system is in crisis—a crisis of Labor’s making.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (3.59): I thank Mr Smyth for giving me an opportunity to talk about Canberra hospital. Canberra hospital is an excellent health care facility that provides a large number of essential health services to the people of Canberra and surrounding areas. In 2002-03, the last full financial year, Canberra hospital provided quality health care for more than 50,000 people. It is one of Canberra’s largest employers, providing work for over 3,000 Canberrans and people from the surrounding region.

Canberra hospital is also a major learning centre providing young doctors, nurses, and allied health workers with the necessary training they need to become the clinicians of the future. Canberra hospital is a major public service of which we can be proud. Canberra hospital is more expensive per patient than the costs for the national average. However, that should come as no surprise to anyone, in particular, a minister from a former ACT government. After all, Canberra hospital is the major teaching hospital for the ACT and the southeast region of New South Wales.

ACT governments have made a commitment to ensure a higher level of self-sufficiency in hospital services provided for our community. We, as a community, have to accept that we must shoulder additional costs to ensure that we have access to high-quality hospital care locally—care that meets most of our needs. The alternative would be a much lower grade hospital service with larger numbers of Canberrans forced to travel interstate for medical care. The status of Canberra hospital as a major teaching hospital will be enhanced over the next three years as the territory continues a solid relationship with the ANU by providing teaching facilities for a medical school on this site.

The notion of the establishment of a medical school has been supported and driven by this government. We have allocated funding to make it happen. The development of and the design in the early stages of facilities to support the establishment of a school were commenced in November 2003. It is expected that construction will commence on that site in the third quarter of 2004 and the school is expected to be operational in late 2005. This initiative, which will increase the status of Canberra as a major learning centre for the nation, is a major investment by the Stanhope government in the development of our primary hospital service.

It is worth noting that the Canberra Liberals failed to provide funding for the medical school in their forward estimates. What sort of commitment does that highlight? The Liberals approach to health care is to make an announcement without allocating funding to make it happen. On a per capita basis, the cost of this facility will be greater than it would be in Sydney or Melbourne. However, in our view, the benefits to the people of the ACT and the region outweigh the cost. Clearly, that is not a view that is shared by Mr Smyth. Perhaps he would like to suggest which of these services he would dump in an attempt to help reduce costs.

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