Page 2954 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 August 2008
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$18 million for a new health walk-in centre at Gungahlin; $9.4 million for a new 16-bed ICU facility at Calvary Hospital; $5.7 million for digital mammography; $5.5 million for a neurosurgery suite at the Canberra Hospital; $5 million for the redevelopment of a community health centre to provide expanded health services to the community; $4.1 million for a new 16-bed surgical assessment and planning unit to streamline the admission process for non-critically-ill surgical patients; $2.4 million for 24 additional beds at the Canberra Hospital; and $1.3 million for a new skills development centre.
This new infrastructure will lead to an increase of 23 intensive care beds, importantly; a 61 per cent increase in hospital bed numbers across our system; and an increase in mental health beds from 100 to 120. This will complement an increased number of care places which are based in the community. Aged-care and non-acute beds across the territory are projected to double, from 115 to almost 230, as will beds for the Capital Region Cancer Service—from 26 to 68. The additional beds will be housed in an integrated cancer centre with increased chemotherapy and radiation therapy services available.
Extended day surgery units will be developed at the Canberra Hospital and at Calvary. Better management of theatres will allow for emergency and elective surgery to be better catered for. I can recall, when I was working as a nurse in theatre, how difficult it was when we had to bump off elective surgery when an emergency occurred. A medi-hotel is planned for the Canberra Hospital campus, which will provide alternative accommodation for patients who do not need to be admitted but who need to be close to a hospital.
Already, the increased investment in recent years is delivering results. We have expanded the junction youth health model. We have built a new sub-acute and non-acute facility at Calvary Hospital. We are constructing a new paediatric waiting area for the Canberra Hospital emergency department. We have opened a third linear accelerator. There is an additional MRI machine at the Canberra Hospital.
We have invested in training the health professionals of tomorrow through a $10 million allied health building at the University of Canberra. This is critical in the current environment of skill shortages that we are experiencing. I chair the education, training and young people committee, and we have heard from health workers and health professionals how important and critical this is.
In short, we have delivered a new, comprehensive health system for the people of the ACT. We have a detailed plan for increased investment to ensure that we truly have a better city and a stronger community through that investment.
Obviously, the Stanhope government’s investment and planning are not restricted to health. In the disability area, we similarly inherited a disability services system that was under-resourced and failing. The Gallop report detailed a litany of problems that the Liberals caused through this mismanagement. In contrast, since coming to government, we have increased investment in the disability area by 69 per cent. Last year, the Labor government provided an additional $15 million—the highest injection of funding to disability in the history of self-government. The new funding has
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