Page 4355 - Week 12 - Thursday, 24 October 2019
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building 24 would be relocated. There was a lot of consultation with the staff at the sexual health centre about that. A number of options were explored and the outcome is that the sexual health centre will be relocated into a new demountable building that will be built on the site of the current building 8 at the Canberra Hospital campus. That will be a high quality demountable building.
Obviously, the design of the internal part of that building will be done in consultation with the staff at the sexual health centre and with consumers to ensure that the really fantastic services that the sexual health centre provides can continue to be provided on the Canberra Hospital campus.
I know that Ms Cheyne is a huge advocate for the sexual health centre. I have used the services myself. It is a really fantastic service. It has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Ms Cheyne and I went along and spoke to some of the original doctors that established that really excellent service. I am really looking forward to it being relocated to a state-of-the-art location as well.
Canberra Hospital—SPIRE project
MR PARTON: My question is to the Minister for Health. Minister, the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine and the Australasian Health Infrastructure Alliance have issued guidelines on planning, building and equipping hospital emergency departments. Minister, does the design of the SPIRE 2 emergency department fully embrace these guidelines? If not, to what extent do they not embrace them?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Parton for the question. Obviously, as I have said multiple times, this project is still in the early stages of detailed design. But there is ongoing engagement with clinicians in relation to this matter. In fact there are 10 clinical groups that are engaged specifically in consultation on this matter, as well as a consumer advisory group that has recently been established to support this. Any guidelines that relate to the provision of health infrastructure that are relevant to the delivery of the SPIRE project will, of course, be part of the consideration of the further detailed design work.
MR PARTON: Minister, does the SPIRE 2 emergency department being located on Palmer Street in Garran embrace the college’s and alliance’s guidelines; if not, why not?
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: I thank Mr Parton for the question, but I emphasise that the current design, which is an early stage of the detailed design, does not have the emergency department located on Palmer Street. That is not at accurate description. It currently has the ambulance entry coming off Palmer Street, but if you look at the pictures of the design it is very clear that they then come down to an entry that is closer to Hospital Road. The current design has other people entering the emergency and the big emergency sign on Hospital Road. I am not sure what the Canberra Liberals are thinking about here, but I assure them and anyone in the chamber and anyone in the general public who might be interested that any guidelines in relation to the development of new facilities will be taken into account. We have very close clinician engagement.
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