Page 1803 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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(b) the recommendations of the review into Medicare Locals, undertaken by former Chief Medical Officer, Professor John Horvath:
(i) found that Medicare Locals had delivered inconsistent outcomes, dispirited stakeholder engagement, poor network cohesion and reduced sector influence;
(ii) recommended that the Government reinforce general practice as the cornerstone of integrated primary health care; and
(iii) recommended that the Government establish organisations tasked to integrate the care of patients across the entire health system in order to improve patient outcomes; and
(c) there has been an important contribution by the ACT Medicare Local and the hard work of its staff;
(2) recognises the need to efficiently align Primary Health Care across the community; and
(3) supports the implementation of the Horvath Review through new Primary Health Networks to be established by the Australian Government.”.
I commend the amendment to the Assembly.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Health and Minister for Higher Education) (6.23): I welcome the opportunity to talk about the ACT Medicare Local and to indicate that the government will not be supporting Mr Hanson’s amendment to Mr Gentleman’s motion. Whilst it looks fairly innocuous, by supporting this amendment we will be supporting the significant withdrawal of funding from the ACT Medicare Local, and I will not be agreeing to that. I do not think that is a good idea.
The federal government have indicated that when they establish the primary healthcare networks, those networks are not to be delivering services; they will essentially be an advocacy body, or an industry body, of some sort. They will not be actually delivering services. That is at the heart of the success of the ACT Medicare Local here.
What Mr Hanson does not say when he moves this amendment is that, by agreeing to this amendment, we would be agreeing to probably 50 of the 60 jobs at the Medicare Local going. This is a reasonably large employer in town now. They have 60 staff delivering their programs. They have been excellent in ensuring that they have a broad support base in terms of the programs and the connections they have across the ACT community.
I would like to see them remain unchanged. I do not care if they change their name from the ACT Medicare Local to the primary healthcare network. What is happening from 1 July 2015 is that the Medicare locals, as we know them, will be defunded. There will be a competitive process. Presumably, there will be a number of people
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