Page 2589 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 15 November 1989
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being progressively implemented, after consultation, and hopefully in concurrence with the staff. In this way we can ensure that the commitment to a system of hospital excellence can be carried through.
I would urge members to take notice of the information that has been offered to them, to agree with the Government that the provision of an excellent hospital system is a very basic part of the ACT and an essential part of our community services. I would urge the members opposite to be a little bit more responsible in their comments on these matters and to refrain, where they can, from gossiping and scandalmongering about the hospital system because the situation of the provision of hospital services is too serious and too important a matter to be debased in that way.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The time for the debate has now expired.
Suspension of Standing and Temporary Orders
Motion (by Mr Whalan) agreed to:
That so much of standing and temporary orders be suspended as would prevent the discussion on the matter of public importance continuing until 4.45 pm.
DR KINLOCH (4.15): As a preliminary, I am not blaming Mr Berry for initiating some of the problems I am about to raise but he has now inherited those problems and therefore must cope with them and, fairly or unfairly, take the responsibility, especially for long-term problems of the bureaucracy of the Department of Community Services and Health and the hospitals.
I want to concentrate on only one matter, Calvary Hospital, and to draw some comments from that. I would like to report on one matter which comes under the bailiwick of the Minister for Health, although I recognise that the relationship between the ACT Government, the ACT legislature and Calvary is somewhat different from that between our Government and our legislature and the WVH and RCH. Calvary is unquestionably part of an overall system of hospitals in the ACT.
As a result of an invitation from Calvary, I went there on Tuesday, 7 November, for an orientation meeting and tour of the facilities. I thank Lindsay Sales, director of administrative services, for making the arrangements; also Dr Margaret Hayman, recently retired director of medical services; Dr Spike Langford, her successor; Sister Beverley Neill, director of nursing; and Sister Marie Tooze who, like Sister Neill, is a member of the religious order, the Blue Nuns, which manages the hospital.
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