Page 3122 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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common cold, wounds and lacerations, sore throats, wound dressings, skin conditions, respiratory and other ear, nose and throat conditions. Those of us in this place who have small children know the stress involved when a child is ill and you have to wait for an appointment at a doctor’s surgery. To be able to take them to a walk-in centre and find out whether you should wait for a doctor’s appointment or get something attended to immediately certainly helps parents at these stressful times. The Belconnen centre had a total of 17,744 presentations from 1 July 2014 to 9 September 2015.
Following the funding appropriation in the 2014-15 budget, the Calvary hospital car park construction works are progressing well, and it is expected that the car park will open in 2016. On completion, the new Calvary car park will provide 704 parking spaces over five levels, increasing the available parking spaces by 515 spaces for staff, patients and visitors.
Finally, planning for the University of Canberra public hospital is underway. As you are aware, Madam Assistant Speaker, the hospital will be a subacute facility providing 140 inpatient beds and 75 day service places—no matter what Mr Hanson says. It will be located next to the University of Canberra on the corner of Aikman Drive and Ginninderra Drive in Belconnen. The services at this facility will include rehabilitation, adult mental health and aged care, with both inpatient units and day services available in each area.
Additionally, the UCPH will be a teaching facility, as Ms Fitzharris mentioned before, which will allow it to extend the scope of existing teaching partnerships and enable joint clinical training, teaching and research opportunities between the University of Canberra and ACT Health. This facility has great potential in promoting excellence in education through attracting more students, researchers and academics to the city and to our world-class education institutions such as the University of Canberra and the Bruce CIT campus.
In conclusion, for several years now we have seen this government invest record levels of funding aimed at building a stronger local health system. In successive budgets we continue to build on important, transformational health infrastructure projects, laying the foundation to meet the health challenges of the future. This Labor government will continue to work closely with the Canberra community to identify their priorities and to implement policies and programs, such as I have outlined, which have made Canberra the healthy, vibrant and livable city it is now.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra) (4.52): It is well accepted that the role of government to provide quality health services that keep pace with demand as a well-funded and responsive health system provides benefits to individuals and the community as a whole. Here in the ACT Canberrans also expect this of us, and rightly so. This government is absolutely determined in the face of pressure from the Abbott-Turnbull government cuts to meet that expectation. The Liberals may have changed their leader, but their attitude to health cuts and so many other policy areas has remained unchanged.
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