Page 2692 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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Mr Mulcahy: How do you know how long you will be there?
MS GALLAGHER: This is the thing.
Mr Mulcahy: You are the health minister; you probably have a fair idea.
MS GALLAGHER: No, I did not know how long I was going to be there. I was just your average citizen turning up to use the health—
Mr Mulcahy: An average run-of-the-mill minister.
MS GALLAGHER: No. I drove my car in, like anyone else. I do not have a special car park. I was dropping off Dave, who was going to see a doctor at the hospital. They did not even know who I was. When I walked in, they asked me my name and phone number. I thought, “This is great; this is how anonymous you are in the ACT.” There you are: you turn up at the hospital for an appointment for a member of your family and they say, “Who are you?” That was great. I turned up, parked the car and went and bought the ticket.
It was the first time you could get a car park close to the hospital. There were vacant car parks. This was at 9.00 o’clock. I returned at 1.00 o’clock. Again, there were parking spaces close to the hospital, for visitors. People understood the system. They were paying. A couple of them were saying, “This is great. We don’t have to walk a mile. We don’t have to be over the other side.” It is certainly managing the traffic problems at the hospital in terms of access to car parks. Visitor car parks at the hospital had only ever been for two hours. The argument that you do not know how long you are going to be there does not run. Even if you went there beforehand, you drove in, parked your car, went to A and E or wherever, and two hours later you had to leave and move your car; you could not keep it there. For $5, you have got that car park for 24 hours.
There is also a regime in place which is very compassionate. If people are caught in difficult positions or situations, they merely write a letter. That is what they have been doing in the past. You could get booked at the hospital in the past. This is not the introduction of being fined at the hospital. If you exceeded two hours or if you parked in the wrong spot, you got fined. People have written letters, saying, “This is my situation.” They were treated appropriately. That regime will not change. What has changed is that visitors can get close parking to the hospital at any time of the day. The system we have put in place, particularly at the Canberra Hospital—we will wait to see what happens at Calvary—is working.
I go to the linear accelerator. Mr Smyth made some comments about keeping staff. One of the things about purchasing this new linear accelerator is that it will deliver a new machine which will attract staff. We will have more machines; they will be modern machines. In fact, we have already attracted staff, including Australian staff. I met a doctor who had returned from America to work here because of the cancer services, what they were offering and the fact that, now that we have a new linear accelerator, some research can be done on it. Progress is being made there.
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