The Australian Capital Territory government’s decision to rapidly seize control of Canberra’s second public hospital run by Catholic Health has erupted into a full-scale federal row, after senior Liberals aligned with the church, and senior clergy, branded the takeover a direct attack on their religion.
As the backlash over the forced acquisition of Calvary Hospital quickly escalated to an entirely predictable all-out political culture war, the ACT government was left trying to sell the takeover as a win for the wider community, as frightened and confused staff, patients and the carers and relatives hit local airwaves complaining about the lack of information and detail about what will happen.
Also hitting the airwaves was opposition leader Peter Dutton, who told local radio station 2CC that he was “just not aware of an action like it elsewhere in the country or, frankly, around the world, where a government has taken a decision based on their opposition to a religion to compulsorily acquire a hospital in these circumstances a facility that’s working well and in the greater public interest and good in a local community and just for ideological reasons.”
Dutton’s opportunistic entry into the row is a sign of just how badly the ACT government’s communications tactics to minimise publicity around the takeover by planning it to coincide with federal Budget week have backfired, with former PM Tony Abbott also weighing in.
“What on earth is happening to our country when a perfectly well-run hospital can be nationalised at whim without discussion and without any real notice? Quite apart from being evidence of overbearing and arrogant government, this looks like yet another assault on the Church Abbott,” Abbott railed on Twitter.
Lost in translation
At a time when Labor ought to be dining out under the halo of a surplus and a raft of signature fairness-based policies like improved access to Medicare, ACT chief minister Andrew Barr is instead fending off accusations that he is seeking to nationalise functional church-owned social infrastructure to exclude faith-based organisations from service delivery. The clear imputation is the trend will go federal, and the Coalition is grabbing Barr’s gift with both hands.
The attacks are largely disingenuous.
While management and ownership of Calvary may change, conditions and pay won’t, as staff are covered by the same industrial awards that apply to Canberra Health Services. If anything, staff might get a modest pay bump when administrative classifications are aligned.
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) welcomed the ACT government’s landmark decision to insource Calvary on the basis it will become part of the ACT Public Service.
“As Calvary Bruce Public Hospital is insourced to the public service, we will ensure stability for workers, with no significant changes expected in terms of management, pay, and conditions. We understand the value of maintaining Calvary as a great place to work, and the CPSU is committed to preserving that positive work environment,” said Brenton Higgins, CPSU ACT acting regional secretary.
Tending to turf
What’s really at stake, and it’s a pivotal deal for the Catholic church, is a major asset that makes the church very decent money through public funding, and which still has a whopping 75 years to run under the ACT’s leasehold system. That same leasehold system allows the government to simply re-acquire land as it sees fit, hence the biffo.
There are two fundamental problems for the Catholic church in this stand-off, and they are both pretty stark.
The first is that Calvary operator the Little Company of Mary was essentially gifted land by the federal government in 1971 to create and run a turnkey public hospital, at a time when ACT self-government did not exist. That land is now being repossessed by the state (well, Territory).
The second problem is that a successful repossession of Calvary could create a clear precedent for other governments to potentially start dealing with church and faith-based organisations out of some publicly funded services that are profitable for the church, like education and potentially aged care.
Both have their performance at high and low points.
That said, governments seizing church assets prompts a visceral reaction in many communities. For many migrants, the church easily outlives political regimes as a lasting constant in their lives, like in southern Europe. And eastern Europe. And the Philippines.
The nature of property laws in other Australian states with a freehold land titles system would, in reality, make forced acquisition much harder. Churches are not bowling clubs, and there is a lot of mileage to be made by the Coalition pumping this issue as hard as it can.
The obvious trope to paint is that of Labor as a faithless, socialist-leaning and acquisitive ‘big state’ endeavour ravenous for land and assets. And it slots easily into the mindset that Canberra is inherently disconnected. It’s low-hanging fruit on a platter for Coalition right-faction hardheads.
The reality is more complex and nuanced.
Vatican roulette
The ACT government has been trying to wrest back control of the two Catholic hospitals since 2008, with now federal minister for finance and the public service Katie Gallagher dumping a bid to grab Calvary after the Vatican reportedly stalled the process unhappy about returning assets to the state.
With the ACT now growing and pressure on health services mounting, as well as the population ageing, it has now fallen to Andrew Barr to have that fight, and this time around it’s fair to say there is less general empathy for the Catholic church’s broadly conservative perspective on many social matters.
Opposition to women in the clergy, gay marriage, access to abortion and euthanasia are all issues why the agenda of Calvary’s owners are a lot less aligned with Canberra’s more broadly progressive community views that saw Liberal senator Zed Seselja turfed at the last election and replaced with independent David Pocock.
It also doesn’t help that Canberra’s affluent Liberal base has now heavily congregated in the monied inner-south of the city in suburbs like Kingston, Forrest, Griffith, Manuka and Deakin while the biggest population growth has been in Canberra’s north, with migrants flocking to newer builds.
This is Calvary’s core community, and the practical reason for the land grab is that a newly expanded ACT public hospital is financially untenable unless Calvary is vended-in (or taken over). It’s a little like the NBN forking out $11 billion to Telstra for its cabling stake in Foxtel.
While this is reasonably well understood in some sections of the community, to the many non-English speaking background staff and patients who migrated from autocratic regimes where the state seizes assets by force, the ACT government’s actions and secrecy have left many nursing and service staff scared and utterly bewildered about what happens next.
Culture eats strategy
On the floor of Calvary’s wards the unofficial rule is to save tears angst for the car park or non-public areas, but the shift in morale and demeanour at the hospital is palpable.
While Calvary is run by Catholic Health, the reality of its workforce is a mix of predominantly South Asian, Asian and African staff, migrants who generally shy away from politics for fear of compromising their employment. Australians may have blase contempt for politicians. Many first-generation migrants moved countries because of them, or their military generals, and that’s the major cultural difference.
Another part of the fear of the Calvary takeover is the long history of workplace culture problems at Canberra Hospital, ranging from bullying to widespread racism.
“The culture of medical training needs attention. It is totally unacceptable that 55% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainees experienced and/or witnessed bullying, harassment, discrimination and racism,” the Medical Board of Australia’s chair, Anne Tonkin, wrote in the Medical Training Survey 2022 Report for the Australian Capital Territory.
“It is inexcusable that 34% of all trainees did. The 1% variation from last year in the overall rate reported is not statistically significant and sets a baseline for a problem that demands action.”
To be clear, the MBA’s report covered the whole of the ACT, rather than specific hospitals. But the issues are evident.
Do you want to die on this hill?
One of the biggest lessons to be learned from the compulsory acquisition of Calvary, and the land it sits on, is the need for governments to explain their actions to stakeholders at a number of levels, rather than assuming a fait accompli.
It’s pretty clear there is a view from the top in the ACT government that the migrant workers who keep Calvary running — nurses, doctors, cleaners, orderlies and administrative staff — will just take what is dished out to them under whatever new arrangements may occur.
This may not work out so well, especially in the event the evidently toxic culture in parts of Canberra Health Services spreads and staff move elsewhere so they can progress their careers.
Part of the rationale behind the acquisition of Calvary is centralising services in a jurisdiction with limited resources so that they are managed with efficiency for maximum effect. That goal won’t get past first base if Calvary loses its core staff to other jurisdictions.
Healthcare is not an employer’s market anymore, especially not in the ACT. The Barr government should know that it cannot just assume the loyalty of staff upon acquisition. For staff, there is a real reason for concern.
The history of hospitals in Canberra is also problematic — there were three public hospitals at one stage: Canberra Hospital (where the Museum of Australia now stands), Woden Valley Hospital (now Canberra Hospital) and Calvary.
Despite community opposition, the original Canberra Hospital was closed and then later publicly detonated in a macabre publicity stunt in front of 100,000 people that went horribly wrong when shrapnel killed 12-year-old spectator Katie Bender.
“It was a spectacle to let the Canberra community know the hospital was indeed gone forever,” the Bender’s family lawyer Bernard Collaery said on the ABC in 2017, 20 years after the tragic incident.
“It was a dangerous way to make a political point.”
READ MORE:
ACT nationalises Canberra’s second hospital as Barr removes Catholic operator