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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2483 ..

I can assure members today that there has been a very clear look, right across the ACT health system, at examining where that transitional care facility can go. RILU is the only place it can go. We have explored other options. We have explored existing facilities within the Canberra Hospital. They have not been agreed to; they have not been progressed because they are not deemed to be suitable.

What members have to establish is that a transitional care facility is not just opening another ward in a hospital. We will not get Commonwealth funding to run aged-care beds on that basis. Aged-care beds will be funded for the transitional care facility only on the basis that those beds would be in a private nursing home. There are different standards, different physical standards, that have to be met for the provision of those services, and a residential-type setting best meets those needs. And that is what the RILU building is; it is a residential-type setting. It is not an acute care setting. It is on that basis that we can use that setting to deliver the transitional care beds.

So Ms Tucker glibly asserts that transitional care can go somewhere else. Well, show me the evidence, Ms Tucker. You’re always keen on evidence. Show me the evidence. Where else can the transitional care facility go? You tell me. You seem to know it all; you tell me.

I can assure members here and now that that transitional care facility cannot go somewhere else. RILU is the setting because it is a residential-type facility; it is not an acute care facility. The Commonwealth will not provide funding for nursing home type beds in an acute care environment. That is the whole thing we are trying to get out of. We are trying to get out of a situation of having nursing home type patients in acute care beds.

So if the Assembly supports the motion today that directs me to maintain RILU in its existing location, not only is it very poor micro-management by members who do not know what is going on on the ground but it is also going to jeopardise those 40 nursing home type patients and the 40 transitional care beds we can put them into. And I may have little choice but to do it anyway, if I want to get those 40 transitional care beds operational.

It is crucial for the better operation of the public hospital system that we are able to get those nursing home type patients into transitional care beds, out of acute care beds, so that we can help reduce the waiting times in our emergency departments, so that we can help reduce the waiting times for elective surgery, so that we can get more people going through the acute care areas of hospital when they need to go through them.

I just cannot believe that this Assembly would say, “We know better. Put it somewhere else,” even though they have no idea where it could go, and at the same time deny the Canberra community access to 40 transitional care beds, paid for by the Commonwealth government—which frees up those beds in our public hospital system. I would ask members to think again. Think again before you decide on a motion that, if passed, will deny us the opportunity to run those transitional care beds, that will deny 40 Canberrans the opportunity to get out of acute care beds and go into a transitional care facility. That is what is at stake here.

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