Page 1765 - Week 06 - Thursday, 19 May 1994
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Woden Valley Hospital - Eating Facilities
MR CORNWELL: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Health. This is not about the budget, you will be pleased to know; it is about people, Mr Connolly. I ask: Is it true that the only place a visitor or a member of the public can get a meal at Woden Valley Hospital is at the staff cafeteria, which is open to the public only from 8.00 am to 9.30 am and from noon until 2.00 pm? Is the Minister also aware that the available eating facilities for the public after these restricted hours actually consist of two fast food machines - unless you are providing edible art on the walls, Mr Connolly? For how long can this ridiculous situation go on, with the relevant union and the Trades and Labour Council holding the public to ransom by refusing to allow a brand new coffee shop to operate at the hospital and provide a badly needed service to Canberrans?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, it does not surprise me that a man of Mr Cornwell's aesthetic sensitivity thinks that the only thing you do with art is eat it. The coffee shop has been a longstanding issue of dispute. It is a matter that involves a current ban by the Trades and Labour Council. It is a matter that my colleague Mr Lamont, as Industrial Relations Minister, and I have been directing our collective attention to. It is an area about which I would simply say, Mr Cornwell, "Watch that space".
MR CORNWELL: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I am delighted to hear that the best two brains of the Government are directing their attention to this. Would the Minister also take account of the fact that at Woden Valley Hospital nurses are frequently obliged to take from food trolleys food intended for patients in order to give it to parents of children? Does he agree that we have the unacceptable situation that parents who want to stay with their children in the wards cannot otherwise get a meal, because nothing is open in the hospital? I remind you - you would be aware of this - that this is a regional hospital. People come from interstate and they might just want to eat while they are waiting there for their children.
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, I must confess that, when we were involved with Woden Valley Hospital during the birth of our child, on occasion a nurse offered me tea and a biscuit from a food trolley. I do not know whether that means that nurses were stealing food out of the mouths of patients to feed a parent. I think one can get a little melodramatic. Clearly, there is a problem in the fact that the coffee shop is not yet open. There have been some longstanding difficulties there. As I say, Mr Lamont and I, two Ministers in the best government in Australia - I think that is what you were meaning to say, having regard to the Evatt Foundation report - have our minds directed to the problem, and again I say, "Watch that space".
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