Page 4408 - Week 10 - Thursday, 23 September 2010
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MR HARGREAVES: On the question of relevance, Madam Deputy Speaker, before the clock resumes, the relevance here is talking about Calvary hospital and the attack that this opposition has made on the health minister about the conversations around its future and its referral to the health committee. So, Madam Deputy Speaker, the relevance is there.
Mr Hanson has no credibility to refer any of these matters to anybody. He cannot get it right. There were no 140 vacant positions. Furthermore, he criticises the minister about the expenditure of $77 million. This is not $77 million of operating expenses which can be going towards the payment of nursing staff.
He also talks about the ACT community having a right to be angry about a continual decline in services. Wrong again. He talks about both hospitals. He talks about Calvary in this. But does he back it up? No, he does not. He has no credibility on the Health portfolio at all. All we hear is exactly the same parroting—the same speech time and time again. I might have to consider putting a breath of life back into that motion I have on the notice paper.
It being 45 minutes after the commencement of Assembly business, the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 77. Ordered that the time allotted to Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.
MR HARGREAVES: I accept that the issues regarding Calvary are incredibly complex. As the Minister for Health had previously stated, she has continued to negotiate with Little Company of Mary Health Care to try and establish an agreed way forward, and I accept that there was no way the Minister for Health could have anticipated the accounting on which the negotiations were based would change so dramatically.
As the minister has outlined and as members would be familiar with, the Little Company of Mary Health Care announced in February 2010 that they would be withdrawing from the in-principle agreement reached in October 2009 for the proposal for the ACT government to purchase and operate Calvary Public Hospital. Since this announcement, Ms Gallagher has outlined that extensive negotiations have been underway between the territory and the Little Company of Mary Health Care to try and develop an appropriate way forward, against a background of continual haranguing from those opposite.
This has included meetings between the Minister for Health and the Little Company of Mary Health Care to discuss possible options to enable a proposal to be developed and carried out. “Secret meetings” is a nice, flowery way of describing it, but I would just put it down to sensible negotiating practice.
In April 2010 the Australian Accounting Standards Board released an exposure draft, ED 194, of a proposed international public sector standard, which proposed that the government apply the same principles as private operators when accounting for service concession arrangements. Ms Gallagher has outlined that the Department of Treasury recently engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers to provide advice on the accounting of the prospective Calvary network agreements.
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