Page 2858 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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Most tellingly, the minister remarked that maintenance people do not—I repeat, do not—consider that they are at risk, and they have measures in place to mitigate those risks. I also have had conversations with the maintenance people, who say that they would not be going into the pit if they apprehended that there was any danger, but they do not apprehend any danger.
The minister seems to have dismissed that advice, saying, in effect, that people who do not work at the facility will know better than the people on the ground. It is a smokescreen, because this government has only one item on its agenda—that is, to close the hydrotherapy pool at the Canberra Hospital.
In contrast, Arthritis ACT and its members and other users of the hydrotherapy pool at the Canberra Hospital have been of one mind and one goal. They have been using the pool for many years. They have been using it safely. They have enjoyed the benefits of physical relief from chronic pain. They have enjoyed building social networks. They have enjoyed relief from social isolation. They have enjoyed convenient access to a facility that is close to where they live.
But this Labor government did not take any of these benefits into account when it planned the University of Canberra public hospital, including its hydrotherapy pool. It went ahead and just assumed that it could simply close the Canberra Hospital pool and that its users could just travel to Belconnen. No matter that they may need to take public transport to get there. No matter that for some the return journey approaches four or five hours. No matter that social networks would be broken. No matter that social isolation would again become real.
Both the current and former health ministers have said the pool at the Canberra Hospital will remain open until a suitable pool is identified on the south side. I applaud that undertaking, but I note the thinly veiled suggestion that this is not necessarily as definitive as it would first appear. For example, Arthritis ACT’s access to the pool has been extended until the end of next month; then it will be on a month-by-month basis. The government is leaning heavily on the convenient advice of the Nous report that, in effect, the pool should close much sooner than later.
By looking at the first and fourth recommendations in the Nous report, it could even be interpreted that there could be a very long-term gap between the closure of the Canberra pool and the identification and establishment of a south side alternative. Even recommendation 3, which potentially embroils a lot of people in a great deal of unnecessary bureaucratic form-filling and expense, draws a fog over the viability of keeping the Canberra Hospital pool open.
Earlier in my remarks I asked whether it was still the case that the government and the pool users were at cross-purposes. Taking into account the extent to which this minister is trying to draw a distinction between different types of hydrotherapy, making the closing of the pool rather than serving the people who use it her highest priority, and attempting to gag Arthritis ACT and their CEO about who they can talk to, it is quite plain that successive ministers and a whole phalanx of bureaucrats have not learnt anything from the last years of conflict and cross-purposes over the south side hydrotherapy pool.
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