Page 2575 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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That is the appalling situation we find now. The money required for the desperate need to rebuild the Canberra Hospital that not only clinicians were calling for but Katy Gallagher was calling for in this place repeatedly has been ripped out to pay for a tram—the exact same amount in the budget. We will take that money away from light rail and we will put it back to where Ms Gallagher, the clinicians and the community want it—that is, into the Canberra Hospital. I am very proud that the Canberra Liberals have announced today a rebuild. I have added $20 million to the rebuild, the price that was costed by the ACT Health bureaucracy, and we will put $8 million worth of staff in in the first year it opens.
This facility will provide a significant expansion for the decade. Demand is increasing well beyond projections. But, even if it meets projections, this hospital is going to be full shortly. This is just like this government with the GDE and the jail. Mr Corbell was on the radio this morning saying: “Don’t worry. We don’t need to do this for five years.” Well, I remind Mr Corbell that it takes a number of years to build these facilities.
I remind this place and I remind the community that it was Mr Corbell in 2007 in the lead-up to the jail opening who said in a committee inquiry, “No, no, no, this jail will have capacity for 25 years in its current bed configuration.” What happened was that the jail was full the day it opened. Here is Mr Corbell again saying: “Don’t worry. She’ll be right. We’ve got capacity into the future,” when this is the very same individual who opened a jail that was full the day it opened, having told the community that it had capacity for 25 years.
The reality is that there is not capacity for 25 years or 10 years or five years at the Canberra Hospital. We need to build it now for the future. There is a different paradigm between the way the Labor Party do business and the way the Liberal Party do business. The Labor Party wait till the system is busted, till it is full. Back in the days of the jail, we had people in cots at the Belconnen Remand Centre, squeezed in like sardines, because of failure in planning by this Labor government. It is the same story with the GDE and many of the infrastructure stories we hear. We keep hearing from people, “Build for the future, build with capacity,” and that is what we will do. We will build with capacity and then we will progressively open it. As I said, there will be $8 million for staff for the first year of operation to start that growth, and it continues for a decade.
I have spoken to many people. Let me tell you that there are very senior people very close to this government in this whole bureaucracy who have come to me and said, “This decision by Labor to pull the plug on this and put the money in the tram is appalling.” They are disgusted by what this government has done, because they work in that hospital day after day. They see the effects. They know what this means for staff morale, patient safety and the future of health in this town. They understand what this means.
I will quote comments from the president of the AMA reported in the paper. He was effusive in his praise. He said it is a hospital that will just revolutionise care and make it a much improved place for patients; that it was taking a 1960s relic and bringing it
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