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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2470 ..

At the time that RILU was established, Ward 12B at the Canberra Hospital was also refurbished to provide an excellent facility for rehabilitation. It has areas where patients can relearn the activities of daily living and a large and well-equipped gymnasium for assessment and treatment. There is a pleasant outdoor area, with easy access from the dining room, which makes it very accessible for patients as well as their families.

Mr Smyth made some comments about so-called shortages in rehabilitation facilities. I do not know whether Mr Smyth had noticed, but this budget sets aside over $6 million to build a new purpose-built sub-acute rehabilitation psycho-geriatric facility at the Calvary Hospital. That is this government’s commitment to investing long term in rehabilitation facilities for the ACT. Guess how many beds it will have, Mr Smyth? It will have 40 beds. So, contrary to your suggestion that we are ignoring what the plan says, we are actually building a facility to meet the need. We are building a multimillion dollar facility to meet the need by providing an additional 40 new beds for functional assessment and restoration for those in need of post-acute care. That is the government’s commitment. Mr Smyth can suggest that there is going to be some downgrading of the level of service provision, but he is simply wrong and is misleading the community if he suggests that.

Current bed utilisation rates in rehabilitation and the acute care setting would indicate that transitional care services are a more pressing need at this moment. The government is not in any way going to diminish the existing level of care. But what Mr Smyth wants to do, from the safety, the comfort and the laziness of the opposition benches, is to micro-manage the hospital system.

Mr Smyth: You’re the lazy one, fella.

MR CORBELL: I heard you in silence, Mr Smyth, and I would ask you to give me the same courtesy. This proposition is a lazy attempt at micro-management simply for the sake of grandstanding, simply because Mr Smyth is not prepared to accept that managing the hospital system is a complex proposition and that judgments have to be made about how to meet the variety of demands on that system. Moving people more suitable for transitional care from the rehabilitation system will free up acute and rehabilitation beds, allow for better patient flow and ensure that we are not tying up resources in an inappropriate way, delivering an inappropriate care setting. That is the proposition behind the use of RILU.

I reiterate that the key issue at the heart of this motion that members must consider is: does this Assembly want to deny the ACT access to 40 transitional care beds? If members accept the proposition in this motion that directs me to manage this facility in a particular way, we will lose the 40 transitional care beds for older patients and it will be the fault of the opposition and any members who support the motion.

I cannot stand by and have this Assembly tell me that we cannot have transitional care beds for aged care-type patients in the ACT. That is what this motion will do today. This is a black and white issue I am putting to members; that is what will happen. If you want to remove the capacity of the ACT to deliver those 40 transitional care beds to nursing home type patients, then support this motion. I am telling you that the government will

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