By Jo Brown
SYDNEY — Sydney University is planning to build a private hospital on its main campus in conjunction with Health Care of Australia, a division of Mayne Nickless. The construction would involve the demolition of the Bosch lecture theatres, and university land would be provided for the hospital site.
The university administration is supporting the proposal as a means of providing medical students with access to education in a new, high-tech environment. However, staff and students have expressed concern at the university embracing privatisation and corporatisation.
At a recent public meeting organised by the joint Student Representative Council-National Tertiary Education Union Forum, speakers described the problems with the project and the links to other aspects of privatisation.
Vanessa Bosnjak from the SRC explained that the proposal would involve construction of a five-storey building with more than 200 beds being subsidised by the university, and that the completed private hospital would be run without staff or student consultation.
The needs of students and staff would not be taken into account in running the hospital as a teaching facility, and the primary concern of the hospital management would be to increase profitability.
Dr Con Costa from the Doctors Reform Society said that the university should be supporting public, not private, health care. He argued that private health care is more costly for the community, and that properly funded public hospitals are the best way of providing quality health care for all.
He explained that commercial confidentiality would prevent the university from knowing the details of the running of the private hospital, and that the hospital board would be acting for the benefit of the shareholders, not the patients.
It has been argued that the hospital will provide Sydney University students with better opportunities for medical training than the public Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, located adjacent to the university. However, public hospitals are the main site of training for medical students because private health care patients can choose not to be treated by students.
The private hospital proposal is the next major test for the university senate, which voted in April to bring in up-front fees for local undergraduate students.
According to Marcus Greville, Resistance member, SRC education officer and Student Education Action candidate in the SRC elections, "It is clear that the vice-chancellor and the university senate want to run the university like a business, maximising profits at the expense of students and staff interests.
"We need to oppose the private hospital as part of opposing this user-pays ideology, and to call for an end to the creeping privatisation of university education as well as for an adequately funded public health system."