Page 2746 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 13 August 2019
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Recently we have heard about the ACT government’s failure to enforce building standards. Over the past few years there have been several examples of building quality failures in ACT public health projects. In 2017 an ACT Health audit discovered flammable cladding on the Centenary hospital and five other buildings. It has cost taxpayers millions to remove this cladding.
The 2018 hospital accreditation process discovered that there were ligature points at the adult mental health unit. The process to remove these ligature points has still not been concluded. The urgency of this task is highlighted by the fact that five people committed suicide at the Canberra Hospital in the three years before 2018.
One of the children’s wards at the Centenary hospital was closed for four months last year due to water ingress. As well, we have had problems with water ingress in the birthing suites. That has resulted in every birthing suite having to be taken offline at some point and refurbished. I have recently received answers to questions on notice indicating that the hydrotherapy pool at the University of Canberra Hospital has been offline twice in the past year due to unplanned maintenance issues.
It seems that the government has not learnt the lessons from these projects. I am concerned that this will translate into the building of SPIRE not being futureproof and creating more problems in the future. We need to remember, for instance, that the women’s and children’s hospital, by the time it was built, was below the capacity demanded. And we have not actually solved the problem.
Recall, Madam Assistant Speaker, that as part of the ACT government’s election commitments in 2016 it promised that there would be an extension to the women’s and children’s hospital and that it would be built in 2019. Two years ago, the Minister for Health announced the building of an adolescent mental health ward as part of that infrastructure extension. I remember asking—I think it was in estimates—about the time frame for that. We were told that it would be built by 2019, but in answer to questions recently in a health committee inquiry, the Minister for Health told us that the completion of phase 3 of the women’s and children’s hospital will be in 2023.
When all of the adolescent mental health advocates came out two budgets ago, extolling the ACT government for the work that they were doing in the adult mental health space by creating a new adolescent mental health facility, they were misled. They were misled because it was promised in 2019. Mr Rattenbury told the estimates committee that it would be built in 2019. It has not been. They have not even started planning. I think we have some concept designs. The urgent need that we have in adolescent mental health has just been put on the backburner because they cannot get their act together.
I would like to conclude by highlighting some problems in the area of community health. The dental health services program is facing long wait times. Canberrans face an eight-month wait for a full set of dentures and 12 months for partial dentures. The protecting Canberrans from infectious disease program has been re-profiled. The program was supposed to be finished in 2018 and will now not be finished until 2021.
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