Page 826 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 20 April 2021
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budget. It is an important initiative, I think, and it is called investigating insourcing options. The government is establishing a task force to conduct a feasibility study into insourcing work currently subcontracted to external parties. I know there have been some questions about this, so I want to clarify that what we are really talking about in relation to this particular task force is cleaning and security services at the Canberra Hospital.
Members would be aware that, under Minister Berry’s leadership, cleaning services for our ACT schools were insourced. This provided secure jobs for cleaners. It very much supported their right to good, secure jobs and ensured they were appropriately paid. We had seen previously that that was not always the case. We are certainly working very closely with and will be consulting staff through the process of considering whether there are opportunities to provide secure work in the ACT public sector for our cleaning and security staff at Canberra Hospital. That is what that measure is all about.
The other context for this budget is the 2020 election and the election commitments that were made. We went to that election with an ongoing commitment to deliver high quality health care when and where Canberrans need it, with more health workers and the infrastructure that we need for the future. We highlighted, as we went through that campaign, that over the previous decade the ACT Labor government had invested more than $1 billion in healthcare infrastructure and doubled our investment in frontline services.
From the innovative nurse-led walk-in centres that Canberrans have embraced and the Canberra Liberals up until now have not so much—although I think they are probably taking a different view now—to a specialist women’s and children’s hospital, a regional cancer centre and a rehabilitation hospital, we have been building a health system that provides better care, closer to home, for all Canberrans. This budget continues that journey.
The election commitments that are supported in this budget—and, as I say, against a background of doing those things that needed immediate action—include a new imaging service at Weston Creek co-located with the Weston Creek walk-in centre. That is more than $5 million over four years, plus almost $5.7 million in capital, to establish an outpatient imaging service at Weston Creek walk-in centre that will provide greater access to commonly needed diagnostic medical imaging services, including ultrasound, X-ray and computed tomography, commonly known as CT, reducing demand for this outpatient imaging activity from the busy Canberra Hospital campus. What that means in practice is that those people who are referred for public imaging services through their GP or a walk-in centre, for example, will not have to go onto a busy hospital campus to access those services. That will be better for them, and it will also take pressure off our imaging services to better support inpatients and those outpatients who are already on the hospital campus or need to be on the hospital campus.
The budget also provides half a million dollars over three years and $250,000 in capital to establish the new walk-in health centre in Coombs. This is a different model of care. The walk-in health centre will pilot an alternative model, integrating services
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