Page 1357 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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The final amendment that the Greens have put is “calls on the government to rule out the sale of Clare Holland House during the term of this government”. Given the suspicion that the community has about the linkage between what is happening at Calvary and what is happening at Clare Holland House, and the fact that the government can, without an appropriation bill, bring that forward at any time that they want to, I think it is appropriate to put “during the term of this government”, because it would clearly be seen, if they were to bring that sale on, that that was directly connected with the Calvary deal. I think it would be difficult to see it in any other light. So that is an acceptable amendment to my motion and the opposition will support that. I seek leave to move the amendments circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
MR HANSON: I move:
(1) In proposed paragraph (1)(b), omit all words after “proposal”.
(2) In proposed paragraph (2), omit “provide”, substitute “table in the Assembly, by close of business Thursday, 25 March 2010”.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Minister for Transport, Minister for Territory and Municipal Services, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Land and Property Services, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs and Minister for the Arts and Heritage) (11.45): I rise essentially to support and reiterate the points made by the Minister for Health in relation to the issue.
The government has only ever been motivated by a determination to improve healthcare delivery in the ACT. We have a view—it is a view that we have developed over a number of years—that it is in the best interests of all Canberrans for us to develop, to the greatest extent we can, a degree of integration in the delivery of public health care that does require a new arrangement or new arrangements in relation to the ownership and operation of Calvary hospital.
We have two public hospitals in the ACT. We are unique in having, as a jurisdiction, only two public hospitals. We are unique in the fact that 30 per cent of public health care delivered through hospitals in the ACT is delivered by or through a hospital that is privately owned. It is unique in the context of public health care or public hospital operation and delivery throughout the whole of Australia, and it represents significant challenges to us in terms of our capacity, within available resources and with all of our other priorities, to invest in health and health care as efficiently and as beneficially as we wish to do and as this community expects of us.
We would perhaps wish it were otherwise. We do not have any hidden or other ideological agenda here; we simply want to create the best possible public health system that we can. We want to deliver the best health outcomes that we can. That requires that we be efficient, it requires that our system be integrated and it requires that the system be as efficient, as seamless and as smoothly operating as possible.
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