Page 2433 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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agreement had been sought to keep these negotiations confidential until Little Company of Mary and the Catholic Church itself had had long enough time to consider some of the issues that were presented to them. It was solely at their request that this negotiation process remained confidential. How long it was going to remain confidential I cannot speculate on now because the matter became public prior to Little Company of Mary certainly indicating to me that they were happy for that matter to become public.
Let us be honest here: they have had some very difficult discussions within their own organisation about whether or not this is the right thing to do. That has gone from the head of the church here, through the archbishop, all the way down to individual parishes. It has involved a lot of soul searching for the Little Company of Mary, the sisters at Calvary who I have had a number of discussions with about this.
It has not been easy for that organisation even to discuss or contemplate this change in ownership, but I acknowledge the fact that they have been able to do so in a mature way and not necessarily with the agreement of everybody involved with the Catholic Church or with the Little Company of Mary as an organisation. However, they have been prepared to have that discussion and the tone of that has always been about whether or not this is the right thing for the people of Canberra. That has been the motivation that Little Company of Mary, as an organisation, have been moved by and it is the motivation that I, as the Minister for Health, have been moved by. Let us not lose that in this nasty attack by the opposition, which is trying to create some conspiracy theory. This matter should be rightly discussed by the Assembly; it will be discussed by the Assembly.
We as the government are happy to support Ms Bresnan’s amendment. I think it does address a number of Mr Hanson’s concerns anyway. If it is not covered specifically in the amendment, it is covered in the recommendations of the estimates report. In terms of paragraph 2(a), I can give that commitment now. In fact, I have given it a number of times. The minimum current levels of service at Calvary will continue. This is about investing additional resources at Calvary. We would be crazy to invest additional resources and then wind back services. This has not been motivated by any clinical decisions about service levels at Calvary.
The north side requires a hospital with significantly enhanced facilities and that has been another underlying motivation of our discussions: (1) what is in the best long-term interests of this community and (2) how do we invest to protect the budget and protect taxpayers’ dollars in the north-side hospital?
We are happy to conduct a survey of health consumers who use Calvary hospital. We regularly survey patients and I am happy to broaden that out. I will discuss with members how that should occur. Reference is also made to implementing recommendations 53 to 55 of the report of the Select Committee on Estimates. In relation to recommendation 53, I believe that I have answered that through a question on notice but I will check.
In relation to recommendation 54, which again I answered yesterday, we would be looking to appropriate the money. The question would be at what point in time. It was
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