We have seen unprecedented use of onerous government powers here in the ACT over the past few months. We’re very lucky to live in a nation where governments have typically judiciously used the enormous powers that are gifted to them in our Constitution. Most Australian governments have not sought to simply appropriate people’s private assets without due process, without due warning and without due consultation. I think this is perhaps the first and most egregious case in our nation’s history where an elected so-called democratic government has, within a matter of weeks, done an almost midnight raid. They walked into a business, walked into a Canberra institution—the Calvary hospital—and said: ‘Hey, it’s a nice business you have here, guys, but we’re just going to take it over.’ That’s exactly what happened here in the ACT a couple of months ago.
In early May the ACT government demanded a meeting with the Calvary hospital executives. At that meeting they were handed a letter from the Chief Minister of the ACT which said: ‘We are going to take over your business, take over your buildings and rescind the contract we have with you that has 76 years left. We’re going to take that over with six weeks notice.’ Just six weeks notice was given to the Calvary public hospital, despite the fact that they had been a valued partner in the ACT providing health services for more than 50 years. This behaviour, this conduct, deserves to be called out. It deserves to be called out so that we don’t see it repeated in this country.
The Senate finally had a committee hearing on the Australian Capital Territory (Self-Government) Amendment Bill 2023 a few weeks ago. The Catholic archdiocese here gave evidence that this was the first time in our nation’s history that an institution of the Catholic Church had been taken over in a compulsory fashion. Catholicism has sometimes struggled in this country. It has had some degree of opprobrium associated with it at different times, but apparently never has a government gone in and just taken over the assets of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church runs lot of different things in this country, especially in the health and education spaces, and this was the first time a government did this.
This was a shock to the ACT people. As I said, Calvary has been a valued partner of the ACT for more than 50 years. I myself lived in Canberra. It was a great place to have kids. We had three children, one of whom was born in the Calvary hospital. I think I speak for anybody who has lived in Canberra or still lives in Canberra when I say that the services of the Calvary hospital have been greatly valued by the ACT people. So, whatever the ACT government wanted to do with public hospital services here in the ACT, this was no way to treat someone in your community. The Calvary public hospital was a valued someone in the ACT community, and it was completely beyond the pale for an elected government to march in and use these most severe of government powers to just kick them out with not even a thankyou note: ‘Thank you for your service. You’re gone.’
Keep in mind that today we’re about four or five months on from this saga, and we still don’t know—more importantly, the Calvary public hospital don’t know—how much the ACT government is going to pay them for this. They’ve taken over the assets. They took them over on 3 July. They marched in and took the crucifix down off the Calvary public hospital. It was the first thing they did, I think. They still haven’t been given a final figure. How can this be in any way just? How can this be in any way on the just terms that the ACT government has to operate under when it acquires property, which this parliament has enforced through the ACT (Self-Government) Act?
Before I get more onto some of the specifics, I do want to stress that this private senator’s bill simply requires the ACT government to have a review. I recognise that the ACT government is a democratically elected government. They’ve got an election next year, and the timing of that election might have something to do with how hastily they have done this, but eventually the Canberra people will have their say on the behaviour of their own government. But I do think they also deserve to have their say while their government is in power, and all this bill would require would be for the ACT government to have a review to give the people of Canberra their say and give the people of Canberra an opportunity to put forward the luminous concerns we received through our committee process to their elected representatives.
As I’ve progressed this debate, I’ve noticed that the ACT government seems to be confused about the concept of territory rights. The ACT Labor-Greens government seems to think that territory rights are to protect the politicians, not the people, and that somehow territory rights are there to protect the rights of those who are lucky enough to have well-paid positions in the ACT Legislative Assembly, not to protect the rights of the Canberra people. Well, I fundamentally reject that. The rights of the ACT and other territories are in fact there to protect the people of that jurisdiction. The people of that jurisdiction deserve not to have the untrammelled power of government imposed on them in this fashion. So I think it is perfectly reasonable to request the ACT government to conduct a review here.
I particularly reject some of the hypocritical squealing we’ve heard from other senators in this place about this issue. I’ve seen Greens senators pop up. Suddenly, the Greens are wonderful defenders of territory rights—and, presumably, state rights too. They’ve got a bill in this place at the moment that wants to stop the Beetaloo basin project. The Northern Territory government has been democratically elected to develop the Beetaloo basin. It was their policy platform. They want to do that. They want to build this thing called Middle Arm, and the Greens here want to come in and stop it. Okay, fine—but don’t come back into this place and somehow say that you support territory rights when you actually have a bill to stop people from totally doing something. My bill doesn’t do that. My bill doesn’t stop the ACT government from deciding how it provides public hospital services. It simply would give the Canberra people a say, and I think that’s perfectly reasonable.
The people who should be at the front of the line to have that say, if this review were to occur, are the 1,800 health workers, nurses and doctors who have had their lives turned upside down by a so-called Labor government here in the ACT. So not only do the people of Canberra just get six weeks notice on what would happen to their public hospital services but, more to the point, those 1,800 workers had just six weeks notice that their lives would be turned upside down.
This is a Labor government and I thought the Labor Party cared about nurses and doctors. I would love to hear from the Labor senators who respond to me what they think about the treatment of nurses and doctors in this fashion. Many of those nurses and doctors decided to work at Calvary here in the ACT because they didn’t want to work for a government; they didn’t want to work for a big bureaucracy. There is a whole lot of other issues that seem to be going on at the Canberra Hospital that is run by the ACT government and some people chose that, no, they would prefer to work for a charitable not-for-profit company. Some workers would also be of faith as well, whether it is Catholic or other faiths. We heard evidence from people who were of different religious faiths who felt valued within the Calvary hospital organisation and that is why they chose to work there at Bruce in Canberra. But they had their lives turned upside down with six weeks notice—no consultation, no discussion, no, ‘Here, we’re thinking about this option. What do you think? How do we make this easier for you?’ No, just straight in.
Much worse was revealed in our committee. While the ACT government gave just six weeks notice and rushed through the legislation in the Legislative Assembly, there were obviously a lot of details to be worked out when seeking to take over someone’s assets within such a short frame of time. In evidence to this committee, Calvary were not given assurances that, if they were to offer redundancies to their workforce, they would be compensated for those redundancies. Would the ACT government underwrite those redundancies? They were given no such guarantees for much of that six-week period. In fact, it was not until, I think, Thursday 30 June, the Thursday of that week, that they were given the assurance that the ACT government would underwrite the redundancies. It was only on that day that Calvary could provide formal redundancy offers to the 1,800 workers. The takeover was on the Sunday and, thanks to the ACT government’s behaviour, they were only able to give three days notice.
Senator Scarr: It was only one working day.
Senator CANAVAN: As a Senator Scarr has pointed out, it was really only one working days notice to 1,800 workers to make a grave decision about their future. I was flabbergasted that a Labor government would treat health workers in such a clearly cynical fashion. Because, clearly, the agenda was to limit the number of people who would take redundancies so there wasn’t too much of a disruption to ACT health services, so, cynically, the ACT government made it very, very difficult for health workers in this territory to take up their industrial labour rights. The Labor Party are stopping workers here using their industrial labour rights to choose a redundancy in a situation where they were no longer employed by that employer. That is what has happened.
I need to also comment on the clandestine way that the ACT government has conducted this in the last 12 months. After the meeting I mentioned that I had with Calvary, a couple of days later—within days—the ACT government had a full bit of legislation ready to go to take over the hospital. The history was that, about a year before that, the ACT government had started negotiations with Calvary Hospital on the construction of a new hospital, a northside hospital, which was a promise to the Canberra people for some time but hadn’t been done. They were negotiating that situation. Calvary had been provided an offer to buy the hospital, rip up the contract et cetera. Calvary wrote back to the ACT government saying, ‘Hey, that is a bit too much land than we would like.’ Sorry, they weren’t ripping up the contract; the offer was for a 25-year contract, not the 76 years left. Calvary said, ‘No, we really want to do the 76 years.’ They wrote back to them in November last year and didn’t hear back. They got a recognition letter in January saying, ‘We note your correspondence,’ but nothing again until May this year, when a whole bunch of legislation, this big hammer, taking over their property was lobbed on them. Clearly the ACT government had been working on that behind the scenes while they were otherwise trying to say they were negotiating in good faith with Calvary.
Again, the conduct of the ACT government here is beyond the pale. I’ve never seen a government in this country act like this, and hopefully we’ll never see it again. We asked at the Senate inquiry, ‘When did you start drafting this legislation?’ At the time, at that hearing, the ACT health minister originally said it was April and then came back and corrected the record and said it was March. Well, I was a bit surprised to read this week in the Canberra Times that new freedom of information documents show:
The ACT’s cabinet signed off on the start of work to draft a law to compulsorily acquire Calvary Public Hospital Bruce a year before announcing the takeover.
So I think there’s a question to be asked of the Senate here. The ACT health minister came here almost under duress. We had to go through the Senate to get this done—and I thank her for coming along. But it’s a very serious matter to mislead the Senate, and it would appear to me—on the surface, at least—that there is a question to be asked about why the ACT health minister told the committee that the drafting of the law started in March, when freedom of information documents show it had been done earlier. In fact, apparently in those documents Ms Stephen-Smith had commented, in the feedback provided on the drafting notes: ‘The point of getting the policy approval for legislative drafting was to commence drafting now, not wait and see. I’m keen to get an early look at what a bill might look like.’ That’s apparently what she said in these documents. So there are a lot of questions there.
The Canberra people have a lot of questions. Since I’ve taken up this fight, as a former resident of the ACT, I have been stopped in the street here in Canberra by many people aghast at how their own government has treated, as I said, a valued partner of this community—whatever your thoughts are on how public hospital services should be run. I think this community, Canberra, is a really friendly place. When I lived here it was a good-sized country town, and there were institutions here, like Calvary, that were the glue that held the place together. To treat someone like that is not consistent, I think, with the good nature of the Canberra people. I really do think that it is worth us making these points in the Senate. It is worth us holding up the principle of the rule of law and it is worth us at least helping the Canberra people have their say about this abuse of law.
