Simon Jones, Newcastle
On March 31, 550 people crowded into a public meeting against the NSW Labor government's planned part-privatisation of the Mater Hospital. The meeting was organised by the Newcastle Trades Hall Council's Defend Public Health Committee.
The audience was told by a panel of expert speakers that the proposed Public-Private Partnership (PPP) redevelopment of the Mater would result in dramatic cuts to services, cost blowouts and job insecurity.
Newcastle THC secretary Gary Kennedy asked the audience to be prepared within the next few weeks to participate in a community picket line to save the Mater.
Public anger has been brewing over the past couple of months as some of the details of the NSW Labor government's controversial plan to carry out the PPP redevelopment have come to light.
Under the plan, private contractors will be granted ownership of the non-medical facilities at the Mater for the next 25 years. The government has reneged on a promise, made in 2000, to carry out the much needed redevelopment with public funding.
Mater Hospital electrician and union delegate John Longworth explained how the state government's highly publicised announcement that workers' jobs at the Mater would be guaranteed under the PPP was a hollow promise. Nothing will stop private contractors from renegotiating workplace contracts or even retrenching workers after the PPP plan has been carried out, he argued.
"The proposed redevelopment of the Mater hospital through a PPP is simply privatisation by stealth", Judy Morley, an aged care nurse and member of the Defend Public Health Committee, told Green Left Weekly. "The private financing of the redevelopment will also cost the public more in the end."
"Governments can obtain loans at much cheaper interest rates than private businesses, but the NSW government insists on going ahead with the more expensive option at taxpayers' and the health sector's expense", said Morley, who was a Socialist Alliance candidate in the March 27 Newcastle City Council elections.
Morley maintains that defence of the quality of health care is at the heart of the campaign against the PPP plan. "At the moment the Mater is a schedule three public hospital. It provides vital oncology services, along with palliative and hospice care.
"If [NSW Premier] Bob Carr gets his way we'll see the general loss of government control over public health in the Hunter. Instead, the control will be transferred to a private sector organisation which, because they need to run at a profit, can only provide an inferior service. And if the business fails, then the taxpayers will still have to foot the bill.
"All of this is putting our important health services at risk and setting a precedent that can be used to force through PPPs in other parts of NSW."
A veteran of the campaign to save the Wallsend Hospital from closure in the early 1990s, Morley is convinced that a determined campaign can achieve results. Although part of the Wallsend Hospital was ultimately closed, the campaign secured a public health-care facility that remains on the site today.
"When the Greiner government didn't listen to community opinion about the Wallsend Hospital we responded with an ongoing picket line with broad community involvement. It was a 24-hour picket line, staffed by committed unionists."
Morely argued that the same kind of community response that succeeded with the Wallsend Hospital is necessary once again.
[To get involved in the Defend Public Health Committee, phone Gary Kennedy on (02) 4929 1162 or email <gary@newtradeshall.com>.]
From Green Left Weekly, April 7, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.