No Privatisation of Midland Health Campus Bill

Second Reading Speech

23 November 2011

Mr Speaker, the Gallop and Carpenter Labor Governments implemented an

ambitious reform program to improve health care in Western Australia. Under

the guidance of the Reid Report, WA Labor revolutionised health care in

Western Australia including the most comprehensive building redevelopment

program and reconfiguring metropolitan hospital services with a series of

modern general hospitals in the outer suburbs complementing larger, high

care tertiary services closer to the city. In short, WA Labor has a vision for

quality and accessible public health care system for the people of Western

Australia.

In Midland, the WA Labor health reform agenda saw plans for a new general

hospital to serve the people of Midland and surrounding districts. Although,

ably served by the staff at Swan Districts Hospital, the view was that the

community deserved a new hospital facility that better met the demands of a

modern health system.

The election of the Barnett Government saw the planned new Midland Health

Campus delayed and then targeted to be the next facility to be privatised by

the Barnett Government.

The WA Labor Opposition has observed with increasing disquiet the Barnett

Government’s continued agenda to privatise the WA Public Health System and

wind back the successes of the Reid report and WA Labor’s vision.

The Barnett Government has no mandate to carry out its privatisation

programme. It did not consult the health public sector workforce, or more

importantly, the WA electorate. At no stage during the last election did the

Liberal Party say that they would engage in an aggressive privatisation

programme of the Western Australian system. The people of Western

Australia were never told that a Barnett Government would privatise the

Health system, but privatise they have, and privatise they will.

WA Labor will not stand by and watch this privatisation agenda go

unchallenged.

WA Labor stands ready to oppose the Barnett Government’s privatisation

agenda. We stand ready to oppose the Barnett Government’s sell off of our

health system and we stand ready to ensure that essential public services stay

in public hands.

WA Labor has listened to the people of Midland; we have listened to the

doctors, nurses, orderlies and support staff of the Swan Districts Hospital and

we have listened to the people of Western Australia. We know people want to

see their essential public services improved and not sold off to the private

sector.

Today Mr Speaker WA Labor takes pride in introducing a bill to protect our WA

public health service from the Barnett Government. Today I introduce the “No

Privatisation of Midland Health Campus Bill”.

The No Privatisation of Midland Health Campus Bill is concise and focused in its

aim. This Bill will outlaw the privatisation of the management and

development of services at the new Midland Health Campus. This Bill will

ensure that the Barnett Government does not get away with its essential

health services sell off. This Bill will ensure that the Barnett Government’s bad

decisions to privatise our health system are not carried out.

WA Labor opposes privatisation of essential health services for five very

important principled reasons.

First, we believe health services should be run to a standard and not a

contract, or profit.

Second, we believe that once services are privatised inevitably staff, wages and

conditions will suffer. We want to see an efficient health service but not at the

expense of the workers whom Labor value very highly and whose wages and

conditions we want to see improved not diminished.

Third, we believe that those health services should be run by the public for the

public ensuring that the Government of the day is accountable to the people of

Western Australia for those services. I note, Mr Speaker, that just yesterday in

this place, the Minister for Health refused to detail any evidence to support the

use of taxpayers resources to allow private companies to profit from our public

health services. The secrecy that shrouds these hospital contracts is bad public

policy and its bad for Western Australia’s accountable health system. The

Barnett Government promised us open and accountable government but all

they have given us is a government that seeks to avoid public scrutiny.

Fourth, we want a public health system that is capable of delivering a world

class hospital care and can respond to the changing needs of the Western

Australian community. Privatisation undermines our capacity and skills to

manage a health care system by giving the health care mission to private

operators rather than maintaining them under the control of responsive and

accountable governments.

And fifth, we want our health services responding in a system wide and

coordinated way, not as a series of disjointed contracts. Government’s should

have a vision for health care not simply a notion for contract management.

When last in Government the Court Liberal Government sought to privatise

our hospital services in the Peel and Joondalup areas selling those particular

hospitals to private operators. The experience of that privatisation agenda

under the Court Liberal Government has not been a happy one nor will the

experiences of privatisation of the Midland Health Campus be under the

Barnett Liberal Government.

Mr Speaker, no one wants to see a repeat of the unhappy experience of the

first two owners of the Joondalup Health Campus. The incidents that occurred

in that hospital were regrettable and call into question the very policies that

put the privatised operator model in place. It took lengthy coronial inquests to

unravel the confusion between private operation and public obligation and to

get to the bottom of those issues to do with responsibility and accountability.

And no one wants to repeat the poisonous conflict between the management

of the Peel Health Campus and the Staff of that Hospital that has so often

flared in the past.

Mr Speaker the Barnett Liberal Government look to the Joondalup Health

Campus as an example of where privatisation works but we say that the

successes of Joondalup Health Campus is not intrinsic to the privatisation

process, but entirely coincidental to it. The work done by the Chief Executive

Officer of that hospital, Mr Kempton Cowan, and his team to retrieve the

heavily damaged reputation of that hospital from its early days of operation is

a credit to their individual endeavours but not a credit to the policies of

previous Liberal Governments.

In sharp contrast, the minister is keen to divert the parliament and public’s

attention away from the privatisation that has taken place at the Peel Health

Campus and despite the late improvement in employer/employee relations at

that hospital there is still a long way to go before the Peel Health Campus can

confidently say that it has met the expectations and the standards of the

workers in that hospital and the people of Mandurah and surrounding districts

for whom it serves.

Mr Speaker I don’t know why the Barnett Liberal Government want to put the

people of Midland through the same anxieties and experiences which were

borne by the people of the Peel and Joondalup, but I do note Mr Speaker that

the people of that community absolutely oppose the policies to privatise that

hospital and oppose the policies of the Barnett Liberal Government.

Today, Mr Speaker the Labor Party as it is often done in its long and proud

history will make a stand for the community of Midland. We will take a stand

for the workers of Swan District Hospital. We will take a stand for the people of

Midland and the surrounding districts. We will continue to oppose this

privatisation and we will do so because we know that it is a bad decision and

we know that it is the wrong decision.

In a state as wealthy as ours, the government should not be seeking to sell off

the essential services that we have come to rely on to look after the health of

our families. The Government should be seeking ways to ensure that all

Western Australians benefit from the boom economy. One of the best ways it

can do that is to improve our hospitals, not sell them off, and sell out the

people who work in them.

Mr Speaker, WA Labor has previously introduced legislation in this place to

stop the privatisation of our essential public services. The last bill was

criticised by some members that while they agreed with the principle of the

bill, they thought it too wide in its application. The No Privatisation of Midland

Health Campus Bill will provide those members with an opportunity to stand

by the intent of that criticism and now support this very focused and concise

legislation to stop the destructive privatisation policies being implemented in

relation to the Midland Health Campus.

The Bill will also provide an opportunity to those members who represent

people in the Midland Health Campus service area to oppose the privatisation

of their local hospital. The community will carefully watch how they vote to

see if they will stand up for health care in their community and support this

bill.

The current Swan Districts Hospital is a functioning hospital with staff

dedicated and working together to deliver high quality health care to the

people of Midland and the districts that surround it. These services go

throughout the Eastern suburbs of Perth and into the Wheatbelt. It is these

staff and their commitment to these areas that is now in jeopardy. The

privatisation of the proposed Midland Health Campus represents a threat to

the care mission to this wider community.

Mr Speaker, this bill will protect health services in the Midland Health Campus

and I commend the Bill to the House.