Adjournment speech by the Hon Dr. Sarah Kaine MLC

Last week the New South Wales Health Minster, Ryan Park, ruled out the sell-off of David Berry Hospital in the electorate of Kiama.

David Berry Hospital has played an important role for many in the local community during some of their toughest times, due to its provision of palliative care and rehab services, so this is a very welcome announcement.

It is also consistent with the anti-privatisation stance that the Labor Party took to the last election and has been pursuing ever since.

Let us be clear: The only person who has supported privatisation of public assets in Kiama has been the member for Kiama, Gareth Ward. It was under the previous Coalition Government that it was determined that health services provided at the 118-year-old hospital could be delivered in the redeveloped Shoalhaven District Memorial Hospital.

Yet the man who was Parliamentary Secretary for the South Coast for over four years—the member for Kiama—did not secure a promise against privatisation from the Government of which he was a member.

The best he could do was get health Minister Brad Hazzard to say in February 2022, "at the present time there is no intention to close it". There was no promise for the future, no commitment to legislating to save it and no certainty for the community for whom it is so important.

Let us not forget the long-term views on privatisation held by the member for Kiama. He was not only part of the government that for over a decade made privatisation its mantra, selling $72 billion of public assets, but also a staunch advocate for privatisation of assets in his own seat of Kiama and in the portfolio for which he was Minister, with disastrous consequences in both cases.

In 2017 Gareth Ward launched a loud defence of the privatisation of buses in Kiama, saying, "I know first-hand how well private operators do in our region ... The services offered in Kiama on the South Coast are first rate."

Tell that to the people of Kiama who, since that action by Mr Ward and the previous Liberal-Nationals Government, have told me that they cannot even get a bus to their medical appointments in the middle of the day. He has left it to this Government to clean up the mess.

Mr Ward was simply wrong to support bus privatisation. In August 2023 the first report of the Bus Industry Taskforce found that service quality in relation to on-time running and reliability had deteriorated, most notably in recently privatised regions.

But an even more stark result of Mr Ward's determination to privatise was the outsourcing of child protection services that took place under his watch as Minister for Families, Communities and Disability Services when he was meant to be responsible for the welfare of the State's most vulnerable children.

Under the Coalition Government, the child protection system was left to spiral out of control. A report from the Auditor-General found that the outsourced system promoted by the former Government, including Minister Ward, "designed and implemented a child protection system that is ineffective and unsustainable".

That is what happens when you outsource and privatise. That is why the Labor Party went to the 2023 election promising no more privatisation.

I welcome Mr Ward's late conversion away from being the most ardent of advocates for privatisation, but it is a bit late for the people of Kiama impacted by the decisions to privatise that Mr Ward took while he was a member of the Coalition Government's Cabinet.

Mr Ward has been very quick to accuse this Government of an intent to privatise that never was. That accusation is by a person who sat in a Cabinet and a government that could not wait to privatise and sell off publicly owned assets and services.

In addition, the Labor Government has not attempted to hijack a grassroots campaign by locals for political gain. That was the member for Kiama.

The Minns Labor Government is against privatisation, and the announcement that we are keeping David Berry Hospital in public hands makes a lie of the scare campaign run by the member for Kiama, who exploited legitimate concerns of local residents about a much valued community service and turned it into a crass attempt at political point scoring.