Page 4840 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 27 November 2018
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MS FITZHARRIS: Women are given lots of information about their birthing options at both Centenary hospital and Calvary hospital. That would include, at Centenary hospital, the prospect of being involved in a home birth. Regarding the second part of Mrs Jones’s question, which was quite unrelated, these matters were covered at annual reports but I will take the question on notice as to specific dates.
MRS JONES: Minister, was the repair work that was done on the birthing suites at the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children done under warranty?
MS FITZHARRIS: I believe I answered these questions in the last sitting and we also covered them during annual reports. The answer to that is: that is being investigated and if there is warranty available we will certainly pursue that. But those matters are being looked at right now.
MRS KIKKERT: Why has there been such a litany of maintenance issues at the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children, given that it is only six years old?
MS FITZHARRIS: I disagree that there has been a litany. It is, of course, a busy place, as are all the hospitals, which contain over 1,000 beds here in the ACT. They are certainly very busy buildings, and, of course, we need to make sure that we maintain them and upgrade them, and build new health facilities, just as we have done this year, particularly with opening a new walk-in centre and the University of Canberra Hospital. Of course, there will be things to fix, and we are getting on and doing exactly that.
Economy—performance
MS CHEYNE: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, the Australian Bureau of Statistics recently released economic performance data for states and territories for the 2017-18 financial year. What does this data show about the state of our local economy?
MR BARR: I thank Ms Cheyne for the question. Once again the ABS data shows what we can see and feel: that our city is growing, going from strength to strength. When it comes to economic growth we are at the top of the class around this nation. In the 2017-18 financial year, Canberra’s economy experienced the strongest growth of any state or territory in the country. Our gross state product grew by four per cent. This is well above our 15-year average growth rate of 3.3 per cent. It represents an improvement on last year by a further 0.4 percentage points and reflects the ongoing growth of the territory’s economy as we continue to diversify and grasp new economic opportunities.
Professional, scientific and technical services continued to be the stand-out sector of our economy, growing by 11.2 per cent and contributing 0.9 percentage points to our four per cent real GSP growth. Health care grew by 8.5 per cent, consistent with the ramp-up of the NDIS, while administrative and support services and the construction sector grew 19.9 per cent and 5.4 per cent respectively. Public administration showed no growth during the 2017-18 financial year. This diversification of the territory’s
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