The controversial forced national acquisition of Canberra’s second public hospital from Catholic operator the Little Company of Mary will not extend to the city’s only dedicated palliative care hospice, Clare Holland House — despite new laws specifically enabling voluntary assisted dying being imminent.
In what looks set to become another political and religious battleground where community needs come second to institutions’, information released by the Australian Capital Territory government reveals there is no immediate move to take over the hospice, despite legal euthanasia legislation being slated for the middle of the year.
“A voluntary assisted dying bill is expected to be introduced into the ACT Legislative Assembly in the second half of 2023. It is anticipated that a parliamentary committee would then review the legislation before the bill is debated,” the official line on the ACT’s Justice and Community Safety Directorate states.
The retention of the management of Clare Holland House by the Little Company of Mary is highly problematic for the ACT government and residents seeking to access voluntary assisted dying because the Catholic church directly opposes euthanasia yet will operate the city’s only dedicated facility where people go to die with dignity and comfort.
The issue of who will run Clare Holland House after the new voluntary assisted dying laws pass — there is little chance of them stalling or failing — has been looming since the ACT government moved to put them in place but was shut down until the Restoring Territory Rights Act 2022 cleared the federal parliament in December 2022.
The highly acrimonious forced acquisition by the ACT government of Calvary Hospital in the Canberra suburb of Bruce is certain to make any change from Clare Holland House’s current operator more protracted and difficult because, apart from the financial hit, the Catholic church cannot be seen to be condoning or supporting euthanasia. That greatly ups the stakes.
With Calvary as good as lost under the ACT’s leasehold system, which allows the ACT government to fairly easily re-acquire land for government use, many believe the Catholic church will double down over Clare Holland House on the issue of morality and the availability of pastoral care and guidance at end of life.
Both leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton and former prime minister Tony Abbott have publicly railed against the forced acquisition of Calvary, branding it a direct ideological attack on religion.
The basic reason Clare Holland House was left out of the Calvary take-over is that it sits on a separate lease from that of Calvary, meaning a separate process would be needed.
The ACT government publicly acknowledged there are now serious questions coming from the community about what will happen to Clare Holland House in the future, but then immediately batted the ball back at the Little Company of Mary.
In an extensive Q&A, where Canberra Health Services (the government health provider) asked itself example questions (rather than directly taking them from the community), the government partly spelled out its position on Clare Holland House, albeit without mentioning voluntary assisted dying.
“What is CHS’ intentions for Clare Holland House? Specifically, the land, the palliative care service and the employees?” the CHS Q&A asked.
“Clare Holland House is currently owned by ACT Government. The ACT Government has invited Calvary to discuss its preference for the ongoing operation of this facility, its employees and operations. In order to provide you and the community [with] certainty, the ACT Government looks forward to discussing these matters with Calvary as soon as possible,” the reply says.
If the non-answer was aimed at not providing the Catholic church with further ammunition to attack the ACT government following the Coalition’s launch of a conservative values broadside last week, it may as well not have bothered.
By Tuesday, the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher, had rolled out all the necessary keywords to invoke his flock to oppose the ACT government’s forced acquisition.
“It’s no secret that the ACT Government want to force Calvary Hospital to provide abortions now, and euthanasia and assisted suicide in the future,” Fisher was quoted as saying in The Australian.
“Taking the land, buildings and hospital equipment and transferring staff employment across to Canberra Health Services allows them to push their anti-life agenda right through the hospital.
“If the ACT Government is successful in this radical action, it could serve as a blueprint for other governments as well,” he said, calling on Catholics to sign a petition against the takeover,” Fisher said.
Ironically, it seems that it’s the ACT’s leasehold system that has put a handbrake on any immediate takeover of Calvary-operated Clare Holland House, which sits on a picturesque location on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, giving its residents spectacular water views and sunsets in their final days.
It’s understood that because the hospice is on a different lease in a different location to that of Calvary’s Bruce campus, the ACT government would have to initiate a separate process to retake control of the facility.
There is also a broader question as to whether the ACT needs another purpose-built hospice to cater for Canberra’s ageing population that would be run by the government from the outset.
While a new facility could potentially be built as part of the planned $1 billion redevelopment of the Bruce site where Calvary now sits, it could still not be opened in time for the looming voluntary assisted dying legislation that people will undoubtedly want to use.
So far, the only real thing clear to the community is that the increasingly bitter battle of wills between the ACT government and the Catholic church still has a way to run.
:
ACT nationalises Canberra’s second hospital as Barr removes Catholic operator
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