Page 3648 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 21 November 2007
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What aspect of public hospital budgeting, outcome, performance, transparency or quality can be attributed to the boards that were in existence during that decade? Name one of them. Give a specific example. Name an achievement over and above the achievements of our public hospitals over the last six years. Make the comparison, make the case, provide the evidence. Where is it? We have plenty of evidence to the contrary: continual budget overruns, decisions taken to cut services, black holes to be filled, and outcomes that were not enhanced or improved as a result of the presence of a board. Added to that is another issue: I am not aware of any consultation by the Liberal Party, in the presentation of this piece of legislation, with Calvary. Mention was made earlier of the Calvary board, but if this legislation were to be passed, that is not the board that would be reporting to the government in relation to the management of Calvary Hospital.
Mrs Burke: What will they do when Kevin Rudd takes over?
MR STANHOPE: There would be a government-appointed board. There would be a specific board appointed by the government that was responsible and answerable to the government of the day. Has anybody discussed with Calvary the fact that their current management arrangements would be subverted, that they would have to be overridden, that the government would provide a board for them that would be responsible directly to the government of the day—not to the Little Company of Mary but to the government? Has that issue been covered by the Liberal Party in its consultation on this bill? I think not. It is illustrative of the degree to which this is nothing but a stunt.
I think we should heed the wisdom of the Jim Services of the world and of the Canberra Times editorial. We should acknowledge this for what it is—a stunt by both the federal Liberal government and the opposition in this place. They are desperately seeking, in an area that they have ignored and have not supported, some credibility through a seemingly popular but very flawed approach to the management of public health.
Name the specific benefits or advantages that were achieved in that decade when our public health system was controlled by boards that set it apart from and above the achievements of the last six years. They are not there to be named. Name the achievements in the context of capital, staffing and budget outcomes. During that period, of course, in the midst of that decade, the Liberal Party took 114 beds out of our public hospital system. That was in an environment in which there were boards in place, supposedly to manage these things.
Is it seriously suggested that the board agreed with, supported or initiated the decision that the Liberal Party took to remove 114 beds? Is it seriously suggested that the responsibility for the flawed psychiatric ward that was built by Michael Moore, and which was declared dangerous within a year of its construction, was a decision of the board? That was a decision of the government of the day. In the context of this bill, and the sorts of mistakes that Michael Moore made, in building a psychiatric unit that was condemned immediately after it was staffed, and that the government of the day made, in closing 114 beds, were they decisions of the board or of the government of
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