Page 5217 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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services and bulk-billing, particularly Tuggeranong and Gungahlin, including the provision of funding; and
(b) report to the Assembly by the last sitting day in June 2011.
I was delighted earlier this week to receive a letter from the West Belconnen Health Co-op telling me, and perhaps other members of the Assembly, about the achievements since the cooperative started operations earlier this year. I seek leave to table the letter I received. I assure members that all the papers are there and they are all stapled together.
Leave granted.
MRS DUNNE: I table the following paper:
West Belconnen Health Co-op—Letter from Michael Pilbrow, Chair, to Mrs Dunne, dated 24 October 2010.
The West Belconnen Health Co-op is one of those community-based stories that occurs quietly almost in the background but achieves wonderful outcomes for those communities. The co-op was five years in the making. I recall that Ms Porter and I attended the first public meeting at Charnwood during the 2004 election campaign that kicked off this wonderful initiative.
Whilst planning was a critical success factor, the perseverance of the community was the key to securing the much needed funding necessary to kick off its operations. The Canberra Liberals were very pleased to support the push of the community. Indeed, it was only after the Canberra Liberals committed funding totalling $300,000 in 2008 that the commonwealth came to the party with their share of $200,000.
This matched the funding already committed by the ACT government even though the ACT’s funding was subject to a commitment from the commonwealth. In the end, with funding secured, the west Belconnen cooperative opened its doors earlier this year, and what a year it has been. The co-op now has 5,400 members. It has employed five bulk-billing doctors all drawn from outside the ACT.
I need to emphasise that the aim of the cooperative is to increase the total number of general practitioners operating in the ACT. As part of its policy, it will not poach doctors from other ACT practices. In fact, the cooperative tends to look overseas to countries like the UK where there is a doctor oversupply. There are two more doctors expected to start early next year. That will increase to seven the number of doctors working in the west Belconnen cooperative.
A second health centre has opened in Belconnen with facilities for three more doctors and the facilities at west Belconnen and Charnwood are almost completing their extensions. Another doctor, again recruited from outside the ACT, is providing on-site medical services to six aged-care facilities throughout Belconnen. The cooperative has established partnerships with other community-based health and social service organisations and even will appoint a community relationships manager next year.
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