Page 5164 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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Question so resolved in the affirmative.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
Hospitals—Calvary Public Hospital and Clare Holland House
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (11.43): I move:
That this Assembly:
(1) notes:
(a) that ACT Government funded health services are provided for the benefit of the ACT people and those of the surrounding region;
(b) the ACT Government’s proposal to purchase Calvary Public Hospital from the Little Company of Mary Health Care Limited (LCM Health Care);
(c) LCM Health Care’s sale of the hospital is conditional on it purchasing Clare Holland House, the ACT’s only hospice, from the ACT Government; and
(d) the outcomes of the ACT Government’s consultation on these proposals, through which the community has raised considerable opposition to the sale of Clare Holland House to LCM Health Care;
(2) requests that LCM Health Care reconsider the conditional link it has imposed on the ACT Government’s purchase of the hospital with the sale of the hospice; and
(3) calls on the Minister for Health to write to the Board of LCM Health Care, advising them of this motion, and seeking a response to it.
The Greens believe public health facilities should be in public hands. We would like to see the ACT government, on behalf of the ACT people, have ownership of public health facilities in the ACT, and it is for that reason that I have moved this motion today. The ACT is currently at a crossroads on this subject. The Minister for Health has successfully been able to engage the board of the Little Company of Mary Health Care, or LCM, in discussions about a proposal that the ACT government purchase Calvary Public Hospital. But the LCM board will not sell the hospital without being able to purchase the ACT’s one and only hospice, Clare Holland House.
To achieve one form of government ownership, we must give up another. This does not seem right and it does not seem fair. The Greens wish to see the government pursue an arrangement where it has ownership of both facilities. I would like to note that submissions to the consultation process from the Health Care Consumers Association ACT and the Australian Nursing Federation, ACT Branch, state support for the purchase of Calvary hospital by the ACT government but express concern about the transfer of ownership of Clare Holland House to LCM.
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