Page 5167 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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consultative model being used in home-based palliative care services. If LCM sold the hospice to another not-for-profit organisation to provide palliative care, the ACT people would have no say on who that non-profit organisation would be. Any staff who are employed at the hospice after the sale would be employed under different conditions to those currently employed. Non-Catholic patients in the palliative care system may have to make decisions about their health care using a Catholic ethical model.
I would like to point out that I do not think any of the MLAs or ministers in this place sought to make the debate about this proposal a religious one. The Greens’ prime concern was about a private body having ownership and control of public healthcare facilities and services. By the same token, with this private body come ideologies that cannot be ignored. I note, for example, that when the chair of the LCM board was asked in a public meeting why LCM wanted the hospice, he referred in the first instance to a recent case concerning a man with a severe mental illness who was convinced that starvation would bring him closer to God. ACT Health, supported by the ACT Public Advocate, which was his legal guardian, sought permission from the Supreme Court not to force-feed him. The request was refused. But the most interesting thing is that the chair of the LCM board made the point that under LCM care such an application would never be made.
This point, I think, starts to get to the heart of why the LCM board are seeking ownership of Clare Holland House. The board are of the opinion that LCM must maintain a role in public health care in the ACT and must do this to ensure their charter is pursued and implemented in public health care. I must say, I have not heard a convincing argument from LCM as to how expanding on current contractual arrangements cannot achieve the same result for them as ownership will.
The Minister for Health did say on ABC radio on Monday morning that LCM holds all the cards; they have the power over the ACT government in the Calvary proposal. LCM has the power to say yes or no and to say whether or not the hospice is in the deal. That is why I am moving this motion today requesting that the Minister for Health write to the LCM board, notifying them that a motion has been passed in this place asking for LCM to reconsider the hospice. I appreciate that this may have been asked of LCM in the past, but it has not yet been asked of LCM by the Assembly, and this is quite a symbolic gesture.
I am proposing that we, as an Assembly, as the elected representatives of the ACT people, call on this organisation that states it has the ACT people’s best interests at heart to respect what it is the ACT people need and want and remove any link between the sale of the hospice and the hospital. We as MLAs have been elected by the ACT people to lead them and make decisions for them. We are the ones who have been voted in democratically to undertake this role. This private body which controls a significant amount of public health care has not. It does not seem right and it does not seem fair.
I would urge all parties in this place, in particular the Liberal Party, who have been so vocal on the sale of Calvary, to support this motion today. This is so we can urge LCM to decouple the sale and have an unencumbered debate about the future of
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