Page 1150 - Week 03 - Thursday, 31 March 2011
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north side of Canberra, Calvary will also need to continue to provide public acute services for the ACT community for some time.
I think we all agreed—obviously Mr Doszpot dissents from recommendation 7—that Calvary is going to have a role in the future health care of the ACT, whatever is pursued. I repeat that Ms Porter and I both supported recommendation 7. When we look at the options paper it is quite clear that in terms of not only economics but also service provision options D and E are the best options. It is our recommendation that the government should be pursuing these two options as the preferred options.
I commend this report to the Assembly. As I said, I hope this will be taken into account in whatever is decided and that the community will also use it as a contribution to the debate. As I have said, I very much recognise that community consultation is still going on and that this is a contribution to that debate.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (10.20): I will make just a few brief comments. Obviously the government will be replying comprehensively to the report, as is standard practice, but I would like to thank the committee for this report. I have not had the time this morning to read all of it, but I have had a quick flick through, and I have to say that the recommendations look entirely reasonable. The government acknowledges the effort that other members of the Assembly have gone to to seek to understand the complexity of the issues facing the community about how we provide healthcare services into the future. From my appearances before the committee, I sensed that members of the committee had grasped those complexities, and it looks as though they have been able to reach some agreement on that.
From the number of meetings that I have been having with interested stakeholders around the future of hospital services across Canberra, I would say that it appears overwhelmingly that options D and E are the ones that are being universally supported for further work. That is certainly something that the government understands and supports. I think that options D and E are the ones that are coming out ahead.
I note that it appears that the Liberals have taken their usual sit-on-the-fence approach to this issue by refusing to actually have a position. They have ruled out the no-role-for-Calvary option. They have ruled out the super hospital, which, as I have said, was really in there as a straw man option. And then they have kept on the table options A, D and E. I am sure Mr Doszpot has discussed this at length with the shadow health minister, but what they have done is they have said: “Well, we might want a new hospital. We haven’t really worked that out. But we also might just want to keep things the way they are, and we don’t want to rule that out either.” At some point in time, the Liberal Party are going to have to have a view, and guess what? It might mean that not everyone agrees with them on something.
You cannot just sit there and ignore the reality of the pressures that are coming and continue to try and be a friend to everybody all the time. It is unreasonable not to have a position, and I think it is clear that Mr Hanson—who probably wrote Mr Doszpot’s dissenting comments—
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