Page 221 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 28 November 2012
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investigates itself does not seem to be open and accountable government, something which is apparently written into the Greens’ agreement but which we do not seem to be getting a lot of at this stage.
I have no expectation of the government that they will ever get capital works right, and it is based on the Gungahlin Drive extension, the prison, the mental health facility, Tharwa Bridge and the car park at the hospital, just to name a few. The list is long and sad and expensive for the people of the ACT, and the women’s and children’s hospital will certainly fit into that category as time goes on.
The defence of the minister seems to be “We didn’t know. We didn’t know there was going to be this shift.” She says that, in 2006-07, 34 per cent of births were delivered privately and in 2011-12 it was down to 24 per cent. But apparently nobody in the interim noticed there was a trend. There was absolutely no trend that showed that, despite the Nursing Federation saying that. The Nursing Federation was referred to in a Canberra Times article on 9 September:
But perhaps more concerning than these is claims from the Australian Nursing Federation that for more than two years they have been raising concerns about capacity with the ACT government, but their repeated attempts to access plans and scrutinise them fell on deaf ears
The Canberra Times on 16 September also wrote:
A week ago the Sunday Canberra Times aired serious concerns from the ACT branch of the Australian Nursing Federation that sections of the new hospital were already full and unable to meet demand just weeks after stage one opened.
The major concern raised by the nurses was that the government, now seeking re-election, had ignored warnings as far back as 2009 that the number of beds was not sufficient to cope with demand.
The Chief Minister and health minister has not been able to rebut those concerns that were raised. There was this feeble line: “Nobody raised it with me directly.” It was in the paper. The concerns are there, and the problem for the Chief Minister, now aided and abetted by Mr Rattenbury, is that this review will not be open. The minister says, “We ultimately release most reports.” Maybe you do, but, then again, you have not on some very key reports. It would be interesting to see what is in this report.
So, the question is: even if you did not expect the shift from the private back to the public, why would you build a hospital with the same capacity, knowing full well that birth rates were up, population growth was up and the population of the ACT was growing in that period? Perhaps you had missed in cabinet the planning for the whole new town centre called Molonglo, and perhaps you had missed the large capital expenditure year after year that the government puts into Gungahlin for the new suburbs. Even if you did not pick up on the trend that there was a shift from private to public, surely you were aware that the population of the ACT was growing. And there have been press releases about that very fact that the population has been growing. But no capacity was built into the new facility to accommodate that. And that, minister, is your failure. It is your failure to adequately plan and adequately get ready.
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