Page 5166 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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provided there. The Minister for Health and the Chief Minister have both put a question regarding Clare Holland House to the community, the question being: what will change if LCM takes ownership? I respond to this by asking the ACT government this: if we give up ownership, how can we be sure that LCM’s management of Clare Holland House can adapt to the changes around it?
Let us take the relationship between the Palliative Care Society and LCM as an example. What if the fairly respectful relationship they have had to date changes? Do you think LCM will allow volunteers from the Palliative Care Society to continue to operate in the manner they do now? There are limits at the moment on how far LCM can push the Palliative Care Society, and the Palliative Care Society can make great use of the hospice’s facility. But if LCM has full ownership and control of this site, they can limit the Palliative Care Society’s access to facilities if they wish. This seems even more concerning given that the people of the Palliative Care Society are the ones that campaigned over the 70s and 80s to get a hospice up in the ACT. The hospice is a jewel of Canberra, one that is secular and belongs to the people of the ACT. How distressing it must be to see a facility for which they campaigned and in which they have ownership be transferred to a private body.
The other concerning factor about the proposal that has been presented to the ACT is that LCM will essentially have a monopoly within public health care that will take many years to break. Under the current situation, LCM requires the contract to provide public palliative care facilities on an annual basis. LCM serves around 221 clients at a time, up to 19 of whom might be in the hospice. The ACT community is being asked to agree to provide LCM with a 30-year contract to provide its current level of services with CPI. So, not only are we handing over the community’s ownership of the hospice, but we are also giving them a guaranteed control over palliative care for many years to come.
I would like to put on the record that the Greens do not question the commitment that LCM has to providing palliative care services in the ACT and around Australia, nor does it question its experience. We also appreciate that, when a person is experiencing or witnessing the dying process, their spiritual needs are often at their greatest. The ability to provide caring and quality palliative care services that incorporate a client’s unique spiritual needs is of vital importance. But how can we be sure that LCM is the best group to provide that service? How do we know, for example, that ACT Health or a mix of other providers could not do a better job? These are not propositions that have been tested.
In fact, I would argue that it is the staff of the hospice that make it what it is. Those staff are specialised in palliative care and are often endorsed as some of the best. And yet, if LCM takes ownership of the facility, many of the staff have indicated that they will leave. If they leave, that level of experience and insight into palliative care will be lost. If many of those staff leave, how would we know LCM would be capable of providing quality palliative care in the years to come?
There are a number of other concerns that have been raised with regard to palliative care, and we could spend many hours discussing them in this place. But, as a summary, some of the other issues that have been raised include concern about the
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