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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 481 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 11 August 2022 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

PEEL HEALTH CAMPUS — PERSONAL LEAVE

481. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Health:

I refer to the transition of Peel Health Campus back to public sector control next year. In the middle of a pandemic, with chronic staffing shortages in the system, why will the minister not guarantee nursing staff that they will be able to transfer their sick leave as part of this move?

Ms A. SANDERSON replied:

I am glad the member for Vasse, the opposition spokesperson for health, has asked a question about Peel Health Campus. It gives us an opportunity to reflect on why the government made a decision to bring it back in-house. It has a sad history, and that sad history is a result of a failed privatisation by a former Liberal–National government in the 1990s. Anyone who remembers Health Solutions and its tenure of Peel Health Campus—I have worked closely around that campus for a number of years, alongside my colleague the member for Bassendean—will remember how it treated its staff, the kind of clinical outcomes it had, and the ongoing and long-running campaign from the community and the staff to bring those services back in-house.

We do not have to look far into recent history to see what a terrible weeping sore it was for the former Barnett government—when the member for Vasse was in Parliament, in fact. There was a chaotic performance of whistleblowing. We had a whistleblower who was then discredited. There were accusations of fraud and some very uncomfortable and, I think, questionable links to the Liberal Party. A senior executive of Health Solutions at Peel Health Campus was a Liberal candidate down there. I remember that campaign. At the same time, they were seeking funds from the Barnett government for redevelopment. I am surprised the member would ask me a question like this. It was a very questionable period.

The former government asked Ramsay Health Care specialists to take over the contract, and I want to thank Ramsay for its solid steerage of Peel Health Campus over the last few years. It has done a good job. It has settled it. The clinical outcomes have been better, and it has been a really good partner to government. That contract came to an end. After many years of the community and the staff saying, ''We want a publicly run hospital in Peel'', we made the decision to bring those services back in-house. I am very proud of that decision. It is a good decision for the community and for the staff down there.

We are working through the issues. The contract will be back in-house in August next year. It is 12 months away, and we are working through the industrial issues around that. We are starting from the point that we want nursing staff and support staff to have access to their leave. We are starting from that point, and we are working through the legal and industrial instruments to do that. I give a commitment to those staff that we are doing that. We are committed to making this work. We know we are in a heated employment market. We know it needs to be attractive for them to come over. But it will be a better employment relationship than they had with Health Solutions under the previous government's failed privatisation.