Candidate's Solution 'Laughable': Tessmann

January 21, 2016

South Burnett councillor Damien Tessmann has refuted claims by Mayoral candidate Michael Brown that members of the South Burnett Private Hospital’s management board receive financial gain from it.

Cr Tessmann was speaking at the special Council meeting on Thursday called to discuss the future of the private hospital.

“In the hysterics of this debate I have had it put to me that I stand to gain financially from the hospital staying open,” Cr Tessmann said.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when something as important to this region as healthcare is trivialised and politicised to the extent that it has been to date.

“For the record I have never received any financial reimbursement for being on this board.”

Cr Tessmann also slammed claims that Mr Brown’s company – Rural Medical Centres Ltd – had proposed a viable alternative solution which Council had ignored.

“I think it’s important to address the attacks made on this Council in the media and on social media,” Cr Tessmann said.

“There has been a withering attack on Council’s actions by Rural Medical Centres Ltd. I was not planning on mentioning this, but given the CEO of this company attacked Council on television and myself on social media, I feel compelled to set the record straight.”

Cr Tessmann then held up a four-page document and counted off the pages.

“This is the document referred to by Rural Medical Centres as the panacea to all that ails the South Burnett Regional Council in relation to the community hospital – a four-page letter,” Cr Tessmann said.

Cr Tessmann said the letter claimed the solution to the hospital issue was a day surgery model.

“In the media, the CEO of Rural Medical Centres (Mr Brown) mentions that oncology, mental health and a general health hub is the answer,” Cr Tessmann said.

“This document gives me the same doubts today as President Franklin D. Roosevelt had in 1936 when he was peppered with criticism about how he was handling the response to the Great Depression.

“He warned against the smooth evasion of those who made promises that did not match up with reality, and I’ve changed two quotes for relevance here today.

“He said these evaders would say: ‘Of course we believe these things. We believe in saving the private hospital, we believe in financial responsibility that would protect the ratepayer, we believe in new health opportunities to come – cross our hearts and hope to die. We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way the present Council is running the private hospital. So just turn it over to us. We will do all of it, we will do more of it, we will do it better and most important of all, the doing of it will not cost anybody anything!’ ”

Cr Tessmann said he saw strong parallels between Roosevelt’s situation in 1936 and the Council’s situation in 2016.

“Yes, this is what the community has been asked to believe, just trust us (ie Rural Medical Centres Ltd) to do it better than those working their hearts out to find a real solution.”

Cr Tessmann then quoted a page from the letter which called for a feasibility study of Rural Medical Centres’ proposal to be carried out.

“Mr Mayor, this Council has done the feasibility study through the due diligence report prepared by Ernst & Young,” Cr Tessmann said.

“We know that for Council to run this facility as a day surgery it is more costly than that of the hospital arrangement. For the benefit of the community, the CEO has given clearance for it to be made known that the Ernst & Young Report indicates that the Day Surgery model is the more expensive option run under a Queensland Health accredited facility.

“There may be some changes in costs for a private operator but these, I believe, would only be at the sidelines.

“Would the average ratepayer on the street really accept that Council would enter into negotiations with Rural Medical Centres Ltd based on a four-page letter with no figures and no financial modelling over established for-profit and not-for-profit hospital operators?

“A document with no statements on who would pay the capital costs to replace the medical equipment that Pulse owned and took with them when they left? No statement on who would pay for the costs of the feasibility plan?

“I personally cannot abide the public claim made by Rural Medical Centres Ltd that they have provided Council with a viable option as claimed on WIN News.”

Cr Tessmann said he also thought it was hypocritical for Mr Brown to ask for a feasibility study to be done on his company’s proposal, then criticise the Council for doing the same thing.

“The attacks on Council relating to time delays seem hypocritical when the so-called ‘viable option’ given to Council relied on a ‘thorough feasibility study on operations of any hospital/day surgery proposed’ – something that would have taken time.

“So it seems it’s ok for Rural Medical Centres to request time, but not ok for Council to seek time in getting due diligence sorted.

“Indeed the CEO of Rural Medical Centres Ltd stated that patients had been penalised by Council given it was taking time to go through this process – time, it seems, that was accepted as necessary by Rural Medical Centres to get their proposal into the implementation stage with acquiring such a study.

“The report talks about time, indeed, it states that it requires time to strategise to fundraise and gather community support on ‘specified timeframes’. Well, what are the timeframes?

“And was Council really expected to stop everything it was doing with health providers such as St Vincent’s and PresCare to follow through with a company that provided nothing more than a vague statement on ‘specified time frames’ that were not even specified? That is laughable!

“I hope the media put that out front and centre just as WIN News and Channel 7 have on the attack.”

Cr Tessmann said he thought Mayor Wayne Kratzmann deserved to be recognised and congratulated for the efforts he had made to get another operator for the hospital, even though they had failed to bear fruit.

“I for one will not tolerate any argument that this Council has done the wrong thing by hunting down every option available to it, when this (Rural Medical Centre Ltd’s proposal) is what the alternative was.”