The ACT Government has proposed to buy the public hospital at Bruce from Little Company of Mary Health Care and to sell to us Clare Holland House.
If the proposal is implemented, Calvary Health Care will no longer own the 250-bed public hospital in Bruce but will own and operate the public hospice and palliative care service from Clare Holland House which at any one time cares for 220 people. We will remain a substantial public health-care provider in Canberra.
The choice in the Government's proposal is difficult and complex. Accepting the Government's proposal means exiting from an important part of the Little Company of Mary Health Care's mission the Calvary Public Hospital. It also means adequate capital investment in public hospital services in north Canberra and a secure future for LCM Health Care's mission through the hospice and the Bruce private hospital. Rejecting the proposal means holding on to the public hospital mission for so long as we can keep it going without adequate capital investment, and placing the Bruce private hospital at risk.
The choice is complex because it involves choosing between competing priorities all of which are an important part of our mission informed by assessments of diverse risks where there is no simple analysis that indicates the better way to go.
Over past months, we have has reflected on and debated the issues as we, in consultation with Archbishop Mark Coleridge, have faced that difficulty and complexity. LCM Health Care welcomes the expression by Coleridge of his concerns. Contrary to Jack Waterford's suggestion (''Too heavy a cross for taxpayers'', Forum, April 25, p10) Coleridge's questions and reservations mirror those with which we have been engaged and we continue to work with him towards the best outcome for the ACT community, aligned with the mission of the Church and LCM Health Care.
We must listen closely to Coleridge because he is the archbishop. Even if that were not the case, we will be helped in arriving at a choice by listening to and reflecting on what he says, informed as it is by his deep learning and conscience.
Tom Brennan, chair, Little Company of Mary Health Care
The proposed takeover of Calvary Public Hospital by the ACT Government is a severe shock to me, to other Catholics and people who value the care and attention given to upholding the sanctity of life in their hospital.
It is no surprise to discover that these negotiations have been carried out in secret over the past six months.
It is my understanding that the Prime Minister of the time, possibly Robert Menzies, invited the Little Company of Mary to come to Canberra to set up a hospital in the ACT. We were certainly blessed by this particular order of nuns establishing the Calvary Hospital.
In this 21st century, we do indeed need Calvary Public Hospital for its high-class care. In addition, the hospital's high ethical standards and its defence of the sanctity of human life are of prime importance to us in the fight against the policies of death.
We desperately need Calvary Public Hospital to remain in the care of the LCM Health Care.
B. Legge-Wilkinson, Campbell
Gloom of Turnbull
I would like to assure Malcolm Turnbull and the Liberal Party that asylum seekers and refugees make excellent New Australians (as we used to call them in the 1950s).
Until recently I had a family of 10 Iraqis living in the government-owned house next door.
I don't know how they came to Australia or the circumstances in which they came, but they were delightful people, and I miss them now that they have left for (presumably) more adequate accommodation.
I can't believe that Turnbull wants to return to the drearily defensive and negative immigration policies of the gloomy Howard era.
Back then, instead of offering our help to a relative handful of people who desperately needed it, that pseudo-Christian prime minister, John Howard, did his best to ruin what was left of their lives, and to rob the Australian society of the contribution they could make.
This mean-spirited negativity was purely destructive, and none of it made us any safer or better off.
Michael McCarthy, Deakin
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