Page 3344 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 20 August 2008
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10-year plan for the future indicates that many of the rooms in the new hospital will be single rooms. To some extent this will address some of those issues around how restful hospitals are. We are looking to build infrastructure that really improves the patient’s journey through the hospital. So it is key that we look at those matters when we are in the forward design phase.
We welcome the opposition’s agreement to that policy and the fact that they will adopt it as part of their commitment to the Canberra community across the health system. I thank Mr Seselja for agreeing to adopt the Your Health—Our Priority document. It is a very comprehensive piece of work. It has taken a lot of effort to bring it to the point that we are up to today. It sets out, without political boundaries, what we need to do for this community for the next 10 years.
It might, of course, be a little in opposition to Mrs Burke’s macro health plan that she is going to release soon—the 20-year plan being formulated by the secret committee, by the cloaked men and women who have to go in the dark of night and talk to Mrs Burke about her macro plan. We look forward to receiving that plan. I am sure it will have key elements of this in it, but we are excited by the potential of the secret committee’s advice to Mrs Burke and that she might be able to formulate that into some sort of comprehensive policy. I guess she will have to let Mr Seselja in on the secret at some point and let him know that she is formulating a secret health plan. But we do look forward to it. We will just wait and see. We have not seen too much common sense come from Mrs Burke in the last four years, but we wait with much excitement to see the idea of a macro health plan to guide this community for the next 20 years.
In the meantime, whilst the secret committee is formulating that and giving Mrs Burke that specialist advice that she so desperately needs, we will get on and deliver the women’s and children’s hospital at the Canberra Hospital for $90 million, the adult mental health acute in-patient unit for $23 million, the new community health centre at Gungahlin for $18 million, the secure adult mental health in-patient unit for $11 million, the 16-bed ICU-CCU facility at Calvary Hospital for $9.4 million, digital mammography at $5.7 million, the neurosurgery suite for $5½ million, the redevelopment of all our community health centres at $5 million, the 16-bed surgical assessment and planning unit for $4.1 million, the 24 additional beds at TCH for $2.4 million, the mental health assessment unit for $2 million, the skills development centre for $1.3 million, and the mental health young persons unit for $800,000. We will get on and do that whilst we await with much anticipation the 20-year macro plan from Mrs Burke and her secret health committee.
Gas-fired power station
MR PRATT: My question is to the Minister for Planning. Minister, at the public meeting in Tuggeranong on 3 July, Dr Guest and the members of the newly appointed health impact assessment steering group admitted that they were totally restricted to reviewing—only reviewing—the ActewAGL plume study. As you know, the plume study has been widely discredited, underscoring the community’s deep distrust of your government’s processes around both the power station and the data centre. Minister, can you confirm to the community that this same limited frame of reference is not also used in relation to the health aspects of the EIS?
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