Last night something significant happened on Sydney's northern beaches. Over 400 concerned citizens gathered to finally hear the truth about our local public hospital. With the member for Pittwater, I was pleased to co-host the Treasurer and the Minister for Health at a community forum at Dee Why RSL to speak directly to and hear directly from the community.

At the end of the day, they are the people who are living with the consequences of the disastrous public-private partnership experiment at the Northern Beaches Hospital that was foisted on them by the former Coalition Government. I again thank the Treasurer and Ministers for fronting up to hospital staff and local residents to explain something that they inherited. The health Minister said clearly that the New South Wales Government is doing everything it can to return public services at Northern Beaches Hospital back to public hands. He said:

"The NSW Treasurer and I have made a decision to try and right a wrong. It's not going to be easy but we can get there. This is a model of health care that no longer works. From my perspective it's a model that doesn't deliver benefits to the community in a way a public hospital does."

I was also pleased to hear the health Minister say:

"We are not in the game of reducing services at the Northern Beaches Hospital and we will make sure it is a properly funded hospital."

The Treasurer said that the Government owed the community and should be accountable. He said that "private equity should not be running acute emergency care". The Treasurer characterised Healthscope's approaches to the Government to hand back the hospital as Healthscope essentially saying, "You want us to leave, so pay us to go," but that the Government was determined to ensure that "private equity should not get a windfall from the end of the partnership".

I am pleased that my private member's bill, the Northern Beaches Hospital (Voluntary Contract Termination) Bill 2025, which was introduced in Parliament last week, will play a role in ensuring that New South Wales taxpayers are not done over when extracting our local hospital from the hands of global private equiteers. Despite persistent warnings from well-placed medical professionals since inception that the situation would end in tears, only now, after recent tragedies and the release of the Auditor-General's sobering performance audit, is the community finally hearing the truth. The reality at the Northern Beaches Hospital is that we are getting cut‑cost health care and it is not sustainable.

I thank Professor Keith Burgess and Dr Patrick Coleman for leading the medical staff council. The council's submission to the Auditor-General is very confronting. I look forward to the public reading its submission to the parliamentary inquiry. Given the situation with the hospital owner, Healthscope, is evolving quickly, I am pleased that Professor Burgess and Dr Coleman will have the opportunity to meet with the Minister for Health and his team before the Public Accounts Committee inquiry is underway. I was also pleased that the shadow Minister for Health attended the forum and apologised to the community for the previous Government's decision to close the Manly and Mona Vale public hospitals and place essential public health services in the hands of a listed private company where, not surprisingly, profit has been the dominant consideration.

A key issue for me and the community, which came through strongly in questions from the floor, was making sure we do not end up with fewer public beds than we had before the new hospital was built. If Healthscope keeps the private portion of the hospital, as is its stated intention, it is possible that we could end up with fewer public beds than we had in 2018. Given that number was inadequate then and our population has since grown, that would be an unacceptable outcome. It is also difficult to comprehend how the private and public components can feasibly be separated within the one building. Our community desperately needs a sustainable, long-term operating model at the hospital, and that is what I will be fighting for. I will continue to raise these issues with the Government but, again, I thank it for its focus and commitment to untangling this mess. I appreciate the situation is fast-moving, and I commit to keeping the community informed every step of the way.

I close with a quote from one of the hospital's emergency physicians who attended the meeting. Dr Cliff Reid said, "The staff at the hospital are dedicated and world class. Yes, the ownership structure is problematic, but I want everyone to know that they can sleep at night knowing staff will do their utmost to ensure they receive first-class care." As the medical staff council submission details, staff have been the buffer capacity in this hospital experiment. They are the flex in the system. Yes, the State has been receiving discounted health care, but that is at an enormous personal cost to the dedicated staff who have always prioritised patient safety, day in and day out. Nobody enjoys working continuously in a pressure cooker, but that is the situation the Northern Beaches Hospital staff have been operating in for many years. As I said last night, thank God for them.

Read the Hansard entry here

15th May, 2025 - 17:21.