Page 1626 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 April 2009
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I understand that the Standing Committee on Health and Disability duly carried out an inquiry into the closure of the Wanniassa medical centre in August 2008 and that report was presented to the Stanhope government also in August 2008. Now, five months into the term of the current Stanhope-Gallagher government, after numerous requests for when the government response to the closure of the Wanniassa medical centre would be provided, behold it was finally presented to this Assembly yesterday.
The interesting point here is that Ms Porter’s motion was due to be presented last week but, due to some technicality, that did not occur. Maybe it is all just a series of coincidences but it so transpired that the delay allowed the government to finally table the long-awaited response to the closure of the Wanniassa medical centre, prior to being embarrassed by the tabling of Ms Porter’s motion which we are debating today. I say “embarrassed” because the wording of the motion by Ms Porter is almost identical to the terms of reference that were given to the Standing Committee on Health and Disability and the circumstances of the Kippax family practice also has several similarities to the circumstances in the Wanniassa medical centre closure.
My concern is that the government has taken over five months to respond to the report of the Standing Committee on Health and Disability on the very controversial closure of the Wanniassa medical centre—five long months of indecision and prevarication, during which time the pain and the suffering of the Wanniassa community have now been inflicted on yet another community, five long months of this Assembly missing the opportunity to look at possible legislative responses that could be pursued in this regard. This is another example of the government’s disregard of the committee system and committee recommendations, even in cases where the majority of these committees were government members, including the chairs of the committees.
We have seen this in the case of Mr Barr or Mr Corbell, who have made that decision disregarding the committee recommendations that have just resulted in the closure of a major community facility, the Deakin pool, causing huge inconvenience to hundreds of clients of the pool and the loss of 50 jobs. The now legendary reputation of this government to resist the temptation to be proactive has been demonstrated again at the tragic expense of the community of Kippax.
I support the amendment put forward by Mr Hanson and urge the government to act before we face yet another similar closure as experienced by the communities of Wanniassa and Kippax.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.06): I would like to thank Ms Porter for bringing this issue to the attention of the Assembly. The Greens will be supporting the motion. The closures of medical practices, including that at Kippax, are of great concern to the Greens, the Assembly and the community.
It is a distressing situation for patients. As I have noted previously in the Assembly and as Ms Porter referred to today, people often build up relationships with their GP over a number of years. It is a distressing situation to then have that relationship taken away from them and to have to go through another process of building up trust with another GP. It does often take quite some time for that to happen, and trust is a key
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