Do you recall during the last state election campaign Colin Barnett announcing that if elected premier he would hand over the running of our public hospitals to private companies because he believed privatisation is the key to fixing our health system?

If you don’t remember that, don’t worry because he didn’t actually say it.  But he should have because that is precisely what he is now doing. So far we know that Serco [a multinational that runs WA’s only private prison] is the preferred company to provide most services at the new Fiona Stanley Hospital.

The new Midland Health Campus [that will replace Swan Districts Hospital] will be run top to bottom by a yet to be announced private company. The new children’s hospital will have some form of private sector involvement.

Everywhere a new hospital is being built or an existing one is being refurbished Mr Barnett is looking to bring in the private sector.

And if the government is re-elected, Health Minister Kim Hames has said they will look at privatising services at existing hospitals.

So why didn’t Mr Barnett come clean before the last election? He didn’t because while he is a big supporter of privatisation he knows the public are not. The public are sick of governments backing out of delivering services and instead handing them over to private companies seeking to make a profit. This view is particularly strong with an essential service like hospitals.

The public expect governments to be directly responsible for hospitals so that if they are not up to standard they can be held to account. There is no evidence that signing up private companies to run our hospitals [like Fiona Stanley or Midland] is better or cheaper.

The WA Auditor General looked at the 20-year contract signed in 1996 when the Joondalup Health Campus was privatised [when Colin Barnett, was Deputy Liberal Leader]. He could not find the promised savings in either capital or service delivery. And he said the contract created additional risks for the state including reduced flexibility, selective treatment of patients and cost shifting.

In the past, conservative politicians have been fond of saying things such as “non-core” services like cleaning can be privatised. With drug resistant super bugs, like MRSA and VRE, now a huge threat to our hospital system, anyone who describes hospital cleaning as “non-core” is a fool. And a dangerous one at that.  Just ask the staff who experienced the major VRE outbreak at RPH in 2001.  Funnily enough, this was where the Court Liberal Government had privatised cleaning.

In 1995 the Court Liberal Government also brought in a private company to run the orderly service at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital. Patients were left waiting for an orderly as staff were cut from 110 to 56. It was a costly three year experiment that ended in failure.

The Premier knows “privatisation” is so unpopular that he now won’t even use the word. He insists that what he is doing is “contracting out” or a “public/private partnership” not privatisation. If Colin Barnett had talked about privatising our hospitals during the last election campaign his spin doctors would have choked on their focus group results.

Instead Mr Barnett was as quiet as a mouse during the election on his plans for health. But by the end of this first term as Premier, five major metro hospitals will be substantially privatised, Fiona Stanley, Midland, the Children’s Hospital, Joondalup and Peel. Only SCGH, King Edward and downsized versions of Fremantle and Royal Perth will remain.

Without doubt the privatiasation agenda is a major structural change in health. Yet the Premier, along with his silent partner, Brendon Grylls and the Nationals, wants you to believe it isn’t happening. Well it is and the public stands to be the losers.