Page 1084 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 20 March 2013
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In my last few minutes I will just talk about regional service delivery in relation to health services. I note the Leader of the Opposition’s claims that I am Kate Carnell lite. I have never, ever assessed myself against Kate Carnell, and I never, ever will. If it is actually the case that all of this was done 16 years ago, then why are we starting all the new programs in health? Why has it taken around three to four years of negotiations with the New South Wales government, supposedly if all of this was done so many years ago? It is just incorrect. It is completely incorrect. It is a re-creation of a Liberal fantasy history novel that Mr Hanson is clearly writing in his head and giving us the first draft of in the chamber this morning.
The renal services agreement, a new agreement, the cardiac agreement around how people from the region who have heart attacks are treated, the private sector relationships we have in elective surgery, the use of Queanbeyan Hospital for elective surgery—none of this was done 16 years ago. None of it has been done. It has all been put in place during my term as health minister and it was in partnership with the New South Wales Liberal government that I successfully negotiated these new services. And they are important. They are connecting Cooma, Moruya, Batemans Bay, Queanbeyan, smaller hospitals which are unable to provide that tertiary-level care, Bega, Goulburn, Yass and Calvary Health Care—again, all linking up and providing different projects that connect the region.
We will be working on a cross-border funding agreement with New South Wales which will concentrate on the implications for both jurisdictions of activity-based funding and the new elements of national health reform which will take effect from next year. Even the health infrastructure program has had a focus on our regional connections. There is the opening of Duffy House, for example, again providing respite care for people travelling to the ACT for treatment; the Capital Region Cancer Centre, where 50 per cent of people who use that service will come to the ACT; the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children; the new Neonatal Intensive Care Unit—all services that provide a large part of the delivery of health care to people from around the region. And none of this was being done 16 years ago.
The only thing that was done in relation to health care 16 years ago was that a hospital was blown up. Over the last decade we have been rebuilding the damage that was done: the loss of the hospital beds, the lack of planning, the no planning that was done for health infrastructure the last time Mr Smyth sat around the cabinet table. That is what we are fixing up. (Time expired.)
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Attorney-General, Minister for Police and Emergency Services, Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations and Minister for the Environment and Sustainable Development) (10.42): I thank Dr Bourke for bringing this motion to the Assembly today. I am very pleased to speak on one element of Dr Bourke’s motion, which is in relation to transport for Canberra.
In conceiving projects in the areas of public transport and climate change, the government is developing an innovative, forward-thinking and transformational approach to achieve outcomes which not only solve Canberra’s transport problems but which will provide wide-ranging benefits to the community now and into the future.
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