Yesterday the ACT Legislative Assembly passed the Health Infrastructure Enabling Bill 2023. Labor with the support of the Greens, passed the Bill in very short order. As with everything with this Bill, the arrogant Labor/Greens Government circumvented proper community consultation. This has included using their majority vote on the Public Accounts Committee not to inquire in this very significant Bill, as would have been appropriate.
And then, in the Canberra Times yesterday, Mr Albanese came out in support of the Bill, backing the ACT Government’s compulsory acquisition of the Hospital. In his statement to the Canberra Times, he insisted that the forced takeover was not “driven by religion”.
There is a considerable disconnect between the two parties. Calvary Health Care is Catholic in origin and their health care system is driven by their Christian religious ethos. This includes no elective abortions or the provision of voluntary assisted dying. The Labor/Greens government is driven by a socialist left ideology that includes providing ready and free access to both.
Earlier this year the Health and Community Wellbeing Committee’s Abortion Inquiry highlighted the lack of availability of the provision of the voluntary death of unborn children to term in the ACT. It was sharply brought to the attention of the community that the only place to have an such a procedure was in Mary Stopes, neither Calvary Public Hospital nor the Canberra Hospital provide elective medical terminations of a pregnancy. A person seeking to have a baby removed from the womb after 16 weeks must travel to Sydney at cost to themselves. This is contrary to the stated policy of the Labor/Greens Government to have free abortion up to full term available in the ACT.
Later this year, the ACT Labor/Greens Government will be passing their Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) Legislation to be enacted before next year’s ACT election. But the question on everyone’s mind is where will this be done? If Calvary Health Care had maintained control of the Bruce public hospital campus, it wouldn’t have been happening there. Knowing these two concerns, both a priority for this Government, it was of course inevitable that the Government was going to casts its eye on the Hospital. It was only a matter of time.
It also raises the issue, what is going to happen to Clare Holland House. Currently, this is run by Calvary Health Care in a separate contract to their provision of the Calvary Public Hospital. Minister for Health, Rachel Stephen-Smith has stated that Canberra Health Services would not be taking over the hospice, but of course, I think there is a real possibility that they might, I wouldn’t put it past them. Given the Labor/Greens Government’s track record, staff and management of both Clare Holland and Calvary Public Hospital are right not to trust in this arrogant Labor/Greens Government.
To say that the forced takeover of Calvary Public Hospital is about anything else than the religious beliefs and how they are worked out in practice, is just well, naïve. It always was. And with the unrelenting pursuit of their socialist left agenda, it was inevitable.