It’s a great privilege to speak on this motion, and I do so as someone who proudly lived in Canberra for around five to six years. My wife and I had three kids here. We bought our first home here. It’s a lovely town, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time here.
One of the things that was great about living here around 15 to 20 years ago were the world-class health services that were on offer here in the ACT. Obviously the ACT, being a relatively small and self-contained jurisdiction, doesn’t face the same challenges as other jurisdictions in providing health services over vast landscapes, but the ACT government did a good job of providing health services. We had a child at the Calvary hospital, two others at Canberra Hospital—all fantastic, all great. I particularly want to take this opportunity to thank the nurses and doctors and midwives at the Calvary hospital, run by Little Company of Mary. They provided a really dedicated service. You could tell it was run by a faith based or community based organisation. They took a lot of pride in their local hospital and the services that they provided, so it has been disappointing, on a personal level, to see how the Little Company of Mary has been treated—and, by extension, the 1,800 dedicated people in the health workforce at the Calvary hospital that’s just a skip, a hop and a jump from where we are today.
As I said, I haven’t lived here for 15 years. Although sometimes it still feels like I do at different times, without kids and family being here I’m not as connected to the situation of the health services here today. I do still know a lot of people who live here, a lot of families and friends, and it has been sad to hear from them about how far health services in the ACT have fallen over the past 10 or 15 years. You only have to read the Canberra Times from time to time and you can see the crisis that is going on in the obstetrics ward at the Canberra Hospital and the issues with the emergency overflow ward that’s been built and has not ever been used. It’s really being mismanaged down there at the Canberra Hospital. There are a lot of issues.
I recognise that the ACT, while being a small jurisdiction, now has to cope with the growing populations of Jerrabomberra and Queanbeyan—they often come in to use the services of a different jurisdiction. And while that creates pressures and difficulties, something is going wrong with the management of the health system in the ACT. I don’t see how this quite shocking, rushed decision on the Calvary hospital will in any way help deal with those serious issues which are affecting local Canberrans today.
It’s very important to make sure everyone understands what happened here over the past few weeks. It is shocking to see a government come in and use its quite draconian compulsory acquisition powers to take assets off private entities, and the way this has been done and the haste which it has been pursued gives rise to serious questions about what the hell is going on here? It was only a couple of weeks ago that the ACT pushed—or rushed—this legislation through the Legislative Assembly. There was no inquiry into it. There was only a day or so of sittings to consider the legislation. And not only that, but the proposal—let’s wait to see if they actually do it—is they will march into the Calvary hospital on 5 July, within five weeks of the legislation passing, and take over the whole hospital. They’ll set up a whole new payroll for 1,800 workers.
And what about the workers there? There has not been any mention of this from the other side, which is apparently the party who represents nurses and unions and the health sector. Not a word from them about how the workers have been treated. A lot of those workers have chosen to work for Little Company of Mary rather than a big bureaucracy. We all love and want to work for different people, but some people don’t like working for a big government bureaucracy. There are certain cultural and other issues that go with having to work for a government bureaucracy, so some of those workers made the choice to work at a smaller organisation at Belconnen. Their lives have been thrown into disarray by this decision, and so now they have to make a choice within weeks on whether to take a redundancy or continue in the job that they love in caring for people in their community. It’s just shocking that people have been treated like this for no good reason. There haven’t been any good reasons given about why this has to be done within five weeks. They want to do it now. They could have had a one-year or two-year transition plan and had some consultation sessions with the doctors and nurses to find out what they wanted to do.
The advice I’ve been given is every one of those 1,800 workers currently at Calvary now has the option to take a redundancy. You would imagine that, like in all redundancy processes, there will be a significant number of those 1,800 who will take the money. They’ll take the redundancy. Some might be getting towards the end of their career. Some might not, as I say, want to transfer to work for a government. They’ll go. They’ll take the money and run. Where does that leave the people of Canberra? How are they going to be served by proper and adequate health services if hundreds of qualified nurses and doctors suddenly leave the health system?
I don’t know if the ACT government is living on a different planet, but all of us right around the country, not just in Canberra, can see the massive pressures that are on our health system and services at the moment. There is not a surplus of qualified health workers sitting and waiting, lining up to take vacant positions in a hospital anywhere in the country, let alone here in the ACT, which always has low unemployment and pretty tight labour markets. So how are they going to replace these people if a few hundred leave? Apparently the ACT government are hoping—hoping—that 85 per cent of people don’t leave. Even then you’re still talking about a couple of hundred vacant positions, so that figure seems optimistic. Who is going to replace these people? How are Canberra people going to continue to have adequate health services if the ACT government fails here?
As has been discussed by other colleagues, the Little Company of Mary had an 88-year contract to provide services at Calvary hospital. There are still 76 years of that contract to run. That contract was actually signed by this ACT government. It wasn’t Kate Carnell. It wasn’t a former Liberal government that signed that agreement. It was signed by the Labor-Greens government that’s still in power. It was signed, in fact, by the now finance minister, Senator Gallagher. In good faith, the Little Company of Mary signed that agreement for 88 years, and, 12-odd years into it, it has been ripped up—ripped up with five weeks notice. Is that any way to treat a partner, a long-term partner, that has existed in the ACT and done a very good job in the ACT for almost 50 years? Is that any way to treat someone like that? It’s just abominable behaviour.
When we come back to this question of compulsory acquisition, yes, the ACT government have this power, which is delegated to them by the Commonwealth government and effectively replicates provisions and powers we have under the Constitution. But these kinds of draconian powers must be used very carefully and very rarely, in extraordinary circumstances. The powers are there; we know that. The powers are there. But, if they’re abused, that will destroy the social contract and trust we have with the community and the people. Even our own Constitution recognises this, obviously, at a high level, when it says that acquisition of property must be ‘on just terms’—on just terms. The ACT (Self-Government) Act says the same thing in section 23. It replicates those provisions. The ACT government can acquire property, but it has to be ‘on just terms’.
There are serious questions about whether or not the ACT government is acquiring these assets on just terms, when it is doing so in such a hasty fashion, when it has given 1,800 workers just five weeks notice for whether to take a redundancy or not and when it is doing so in a way that provides no opportunity for the local Canberra community to have their say, to contribute to an inquiry and to put a spotlight on why and how this decision has been made. I should say the Little Company of Mary have not even been given a price. They don’t know yet how much they’re going to be paid. Apparently there will be some amount worked out. There will have to be, given the legal obligations of the ACT government. But that hasn’t even been decided yet. How is that at all on just terms?
This parliament delegated that power to the ACT parliament. They are a unicameral parliament. They do not have an upper house like the federal parliament. They are subject to the constitutional provisions that flow through that ACT (Self-Government) Act. I do think it’s incumbent on us, given that we have delegated those powers to the ACT, to ensure that they have been properly applied and not abused, because this is a great power. It is a very, very significant power for any government to be able to step in and take away someone’s assets, take away someone’s business. It’s an extremely grave power. And with that great power comes the great responsibility to use it prudently, diligently and carefully. We should play a role, as parliamentarians, to make sure that representative governments are held to account, to their own people, in using such great powers.
That is why I proposed a Senate committee inquiry and why I think the 1,800 workers at Calvary Public Hospital and the 350,000-odd Canberrans who live here and rely on those health services deserve to have their say through an inquiry into such an extraordinary intervention by the ACT government. Unfortunately, that inquiry did not get up today. I’ve got great respect for Senator Pocock, who seems like a good guy, but he’s been pretty soft here, not to be able to give his own local constituents a platform and a voice that they’ve been denied by their own territory government.
There was no way that our Senate inquiry could stop the ACT government. It couldn’t. There has been a total mischaracterisation by people who don’t want an inquiry, to somehow suggest an inquiry would stop this or take away their powers. We can’t do that, obviously, as senators. We can’t even do that through legislation of our own—obviously, the House has to do it as well. All an inquiry would do would give Canberrans a chance to make a submission and to appear before an inquiry. It would give the nurses and doctors a chance to have their voices heard. Obviously, the ACT government doesn’t want this. They don’t want an inquiry. They don’t want to feel uncomfortable by having direct criticism of their decisions. But I think democratically elected politicians should be made to feel uncomfortable sometimes. That’s how our system should work. They shouldn’t get an easy ride when they make decisions of this gravity. They should have to face up to the furnace of a public inquiry examination of their decisions, which is not happening here.
Senator Pocock tried to rescind my motion, tried to move an amendment to get rid of any inquiry and, instead, request that the President of the Senate write a letter to the ACT government relaying the local Canberrans’ concerns. Senator Pocock, that’s the equivalent of playing touch footy, not rugby. Sending a letter is a soft touch. It’s the softest thing you can do. If you’ve got a constituent and you don’t know what you’re doing, you send a letter. You’re not doing much at all, whereas having an inquiry would put a blowtorch onto the Barr government and the decisions and roles that the bureaucrats have played here in Canberra. That’s taking real action for your constituents. Some other constituents might be unhappy about that, but at least it’s giving them a voice. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to support a particular option, but you’re helping them have their say through a democratic process.
It’s very unfortunate that we have resolved, as a Senate, not to help and assist Canberrans, not to ensure that decisions made by democratic parliaments are properly scrutinised. I’ll see what I can do next week, while we’re here, to continue to hold this decision to account, because it is concerning, not just to Canberrans but to everyone around the country. As I say, we have great power as elected governments to compulsorily acquire assets from time to time, but we must ensure that those powers are used properly and prudently, and that has clearly not happened in this case, so we’ve got to take action here. Otherwise, if nothing happens here and we’re a soft touch in this decision, it’ll be a big green light to other governments that might think they can bully businesses and local community groups to get their way. I would hate to see our country go down that path. What’s happened here in the ACT is regrettable. We could play a small role in helping to fix that and give local Canberrans a voice. It’s very disappointing that we haven’t chosen to do that in the Senate here today.
