The senate remains unclear about when an in-house medical service proposed in the report done by former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins on the culture of Parliament House will receive funding from the federal government.
Setting up an in-house medical service during sitting weeks was part of recommendations in the Set the Standard report released in November 2021. It proposed that the Department of Parliamentary Services “should lead the establishment of a Parliamentary Health and Wellbeing Service”.
The Jenkins report recommended that the service provide basic physical and mental health services, offer services onsite at Parliament House and be operated by practitioners with knowledge and understanding of parliamentary workplaces.
It was recommendation 26 of 28 recommendations made to improve the workplace culture of parliamentary workplaces so that politicians, their staffers, and public servants would work in a safer workplace.
Shadow state minister Jane Hume asked the Department of Parliamentary Services in February why a greater priority had not been assigned to progressing the recommendation given that a feasibility study related to the service was completed in November 2022.
Hume said the senate did not receive a copy of the feasibility study until February despite “asking this department for a copy” for some time.
The feasibility study conducted by Strategic Development Group assumes a general practitioner stationed at Parliament House for 20 sitting weeks would cost $361,000 a year.
That cost includes a $300,000 salary, a $48,000 amount for administrative support, software licences estimated to be worth $3,000 and an allocation of $10,000 for medical consumables.
“It does concern me greatly that the ongoing cost of having a GP service in sitting weeks in the building, $361,000, almost identically matches up to the amount of money that the department of the senate has spent on designer furniture in the last 12 months,” Hume said.
“It seems unreasonable this isn’t being given more priority. Have you sought funding to try to and implement the recommendations from 2026?”
The Department of Parliamentary Services took Hume’s questions on notice and the reply confirmed that a request had been submitted for funding in last year’s federal Budget.
“A proposal related to Recommendation 26 activities was submitted to government for the 2023-24 Budget cycle. Consideration was then deferred to the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook process,” the response reads.
“The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have advised that the deliberations of the Cabinet regarding funding proposals are confidential to preserve the freedom of its deliberations.”
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Set the Standard review: Two years on, have we made progress?
