A wire security fence surrounds a patch of the carpark of old Royal Canberra Hospital on Acton Peninsula. A yellow sign says: Site for Hospice.
The peninsula is like a scene from The Day of the Triffids. It is a weekday afternoon. There should be people, noise and traffic so close to the city centre. Instead there is an eerie quiet. Large empty buildings are still intact with signs to direct people and cars. It is as if the people had fled some impending terror.
From the point of the peninsula you feel you can touch Commonwealth Avenue Bridge. The busy late afternoon traffic scurries home from the office to the television news. Parliament House is just there. It is the centre of Canberra, but someone has cast a taboo across it. It is a sacred site.
The ACT Labor Party has decided the peninsula will have health facilities of some kind and will have some low-cost housing _ no matter what the cost, no matter what the advice and desires of the health professionals.
It promised this after unsuccessfully fighting the Alliance Government’s decision to close Royal Canberra. There was a lot of community anger about the closure and Labor capitalised on it. It won the 1992 election an affirmed the decision to build a hospice on the site. By then the move to Woden was irreversible.
For some reason it feels it must keep the promise, which everyone recognised was just a sop to people outraged at the closure of Royal Canberra. For some reason it think they will be appeased by having a 17-bed hospice on the site in place of a full-scale major hospital.
Unlike Federal Labor, ACT Labor will not break an election promise in the name of economic responsibility. It has been every opportunity to do so, but has not taken the queue.
Work will begin next month. The hospice will be built miles away from any of the three other hospitals. The director will also hold a position at Woden.
ACT health bureaucrats, health professionals and members of the former health board have all urged (nearly all in private) that the hospice be built near an existing hospital: either Calvary or Woden. It makes obvious sense. It would be close to other health professionals. It can achieve economies of scale for any number of ancillary services: pharmacy, food, administration, communications etc etc.
The Minister’s office says the extra costs will not be significant. The importance of the pleasant site for dying people is more significant. Wide consultation took place in 1991 and the Acton site was agreed upon.
People in the Hospice Society, which has been arguing for a hospice for more than eight years, are in a difficult position. They are worried about the extra costs, but are so anxious to get a hospice that they have to support the Acton site for fear of not getting anything at all. They would much prefer a site near Calvary.
But Calvary is politically unacceptable. We can’t have those Catholics prolonging life to the bitter end.
The Hospice Society does not want to come under the administrative arm or same roof as Woden. In any event Woden is still going through building hassles and so a hospice would just add to the confusion unless it were delayed a year or more.
The Government was given an opportunity to get out of its promise by the National Capital Planning Authority which has a veto over national land, which includes Acton Peninsula. The NCPA gave the ACT the worse site: the south-western corner. Sure, there is a nice view of the lake, but you will have to sit in the cold shade of the building to enjoy it.
So there you have it. A hospice for 17 people will be built on a site that no-one wants to fulfil a political promise that no-one cares about any more. It will cost more to run and be far more inconvenient. It will also take land in the cultural and commercial heart of Canberra.
There is only one month left to stop this folly. The Minister for Arts, Bob McMullan, should suggest to the ACT that Acton Peninsula be the site for the National Museum (a short ferry ride from Parliament House, the National Library, Gallery, High Court, Science Centre and from the museum’s political annexe in the Old Parliament House). The site could have a range of restaurants and shops along the north-facing shore to give the museum a commercial fillip. I don’t think he would get any opposition from either ACT major party or the NCPA.
Then the hospice can go where it should: where it can be supported by other health professionals.