Page 144 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Oh, dear! The article continued:
Ms Gallagher said it made sense not to have a walk-in clinic on the hospital grounds … “There are a couple of options—you could move it off-site and have two $5 million clinics—
that is half clinics; if a clinic costs $10 million, then $5 million is half a clinic—
or … you could keep the Canberra Hospital going … My own view is that’s not the preferred model.”
That is not the preferred model. No, she wants to move it. She wants to close it down at the Canberra Hospital. That was Peter Jean in the Canberra Times. “Walk-in clinic election promise ‘misleading’” was the title of the ABC media report. Again, it litigated the point that although Katy Gallagher had been out there spruiking the expansion of the service, she had omitted the little detail that she was going to close down the centre at the Canberra Hospital. Whoops! You would have thought that that might have been a pertinent detail that she would have put forward.
How about another media report? “ACT government backtracks on walk-in clinics.” Mr Speaker, what has happened here is that the government promised three walk-in centres at the last election. It was a black and white election pledge. They delivered one. They then tried to say to the public: “We are expanding the service. Here are the two new ones.” It turns out that two new ones are not two new ones. It is one new one and one relocated—or if Katy Gallagher gets her way, what she gets is two half clinics. There are two half clinics, because they only cost $5 million.
These are words in black and white. This is the health minister we are being asked to trust—“Trust me. I never tell a lie.” This is a health minister who told us that we would have a secure adult mental health facility. It does not seem to bother Ms Bresnan. She is always talking about the need for mental health services, but she just lets that one slip. She does not hold Katy Gallagher to account.
Then we have the issue of funding, of where the funding is coming from. This is another question that I have. I will quote from the press release from the federal government when this was opened:
The Rudd Government has provided $10 million in recurrent funding for the first four years, while the ACT Government has provided $2.175 million in capital funding.
When you look at the budget papers, you see that Katy Gallagher did not release any costings on this. They demand all this sort of information from the opposition. We have got to go through the wringer if we put anything out. There is the demand for scrutiny. But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in terms of costings. It was just, “It is $10 million.” That is how we have worked out that it is actually one centre, not two.
The funding from the commonwealth goes, based on the press release, until 2013-14. In that year there is not the full amount. It is about half the amount. So I have a
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video