Page 2264 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 5 June 2013
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professionals. The workforce will grow by 131 full-time positions which, combined with a $45 million investment in elective surgery and emergency departments, will assist us to reduce waiting times for people waiting for treatment.
We are delivering new infrastructure across our major health facilities, with new beds, new services to meet the demand for outpatient services which have been generated by our increase in elective surgery. We have got more money going into cancer outpatient services for the brand new Canberra Region Cancer Centre which will open later this year and $40 million to deliver the next stage of the hospital’s redevelopment which will include design and approvals for major new clinical buildings and extension to the emergency department, including the dedicated paediatric area. There will also be extra services for women and children through the centenary hospital.
At Calvary hospital there will be extra beds going in there, the design money to construct a 700 car space multistorey car park, funding to operate the eight rapid assessment beds unit, extra hospital in the home places and funding for the construction and fit-out of the north side birthing centre. The nurse-led walk-in centre model will be taken to Belconnen and Tuggeranong as promised, with capital funding for the fit-out of those clinics at $950,000.
We will also progress to the next stage of the University of Canberra public hospital, with funding of $8.2 million to take that project to preliminary sketch plan stage. The government is looking into the future with this project. The UCPH will be designed to respond to growing demands for subacute rehabilitation, aged care and mental health services. Being connected to the university makes sense and crosses in with my portfolio of higher education, and we will be able to weave clinical education and research into the running of the new hospital. This is one of the many strategic investments that will help our thriving tertiary education sector continue to grow.
We will also invest money into our universities, as employers and as exporters, through the $2 million study Canberra initiatives, and of course the funding that we are providing to support the establishment and recruitment of a world-leading expert in cancer research that will come to the ANU and help provide clinical expertise to the Capital Region Cancer Centre.
Despite the constraints on the budget, the government has made savings and allocated funding for the rollout of two nation-building reforms in disability care and the national education reform agreement. We are proud to join with the federal government in leading the way in the next great wave of Labor reforms.
The beginning of DisabilityCare Australia will be a defining moment of 2013-14. The ACT was the first jurisdiction to sign up, and this budget includes $5½ million over two years, which will combine with $10.6 million from the commonwealth to prepare for the rollout. And any one of us, as MLAs, who have attended those carers meetings in our role as ordinary members of this place and also in the lead-up to elections will simply understand the magnitude of the reform that is coming with this initiative so that we will not have a situation where parents will be begging for respite care for
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