Many North Shore residents fell for the Baird government line that privatised healthcare services would be ‘the same but better’. 

When nurse Robyne Brown heard the state government was taking over Northern Beaches Hospital (NBH), “I ran into the stockroom and said, I told you so!” she said. 

As NSWNMA branch secretary at Mona Vale Hospital, Robyne was an early and prominent opponent of the Baird government’s 2013 decision to establish NBH as a so-called public-private partnership. 

She feared the consequences for patients and nurses if services delivered at Mona Vale and Manly public hospitals were handed to a profit-driven private operator such as Healthscope. 

“Soon after the government announcement, a community meeting was held to sell the concept of the new hospital to the public. We had NSWNMA members dotted around the floor to try and ask questions,” Robyne said. 

“I think our campaign against the privatisation after that meeting did really well. However, NSW Health was adamant that the privatisation was happening and they weren’t going to budge. 

“Our campaign got a lot of support, but as much as we tried, many people failed to realise what impact a private hospital delivering public services would have on the community. 

“People believed the government line that everything would be ‘the same but better’ because NBH would be a bigger and fancier hospital. 

“A lot of people got a shock after it opened, when suddenly patients were asked to pay for all sorts of things that they would never have paid for in a public hospital. 

“I worked in day surgery where we would have a patient covered by a private fund and paying an excess while the public patient having the same procedure next to them paid nothing. 

“If you were a public patient everything was free, including medications to take home. But private patients had to pay for them.” 

Staffing got progressively worse

As Mona Vale branch secretary, Robyne battled to get answers to nurses’ questions about employment and working conditions at NBH. 

“Before NBH opened in 2018 we had two very frustrating years of so-called planning talks with Healthscope and NSW Health,” she said. 

“Every two months Lyn Hopper (Manly Hospital branch president) and I would join the NSWNMA officers and go to a planning meeting, where Healthscope did not want to tell us anything.

“They wouldn’t give us any of the models of care or tell us how many staff we were going to have. 

“We had some arbitrary person telling us which field every nurse would be transferred to. 

“Most people had to accept the job they were offered and then apply later if they wanted a different job.” 

Once NBH opened, Robyne became secretary of the NBH branch and remained at the hospital until arranging a new job in the public system a year ago. 

“Staffing levels at NBH were not as good as the public system and the poor communication and lack of transparency made life difficult – especially for branch officials seeking information,” she said. 

“There was a lot of frustration with changing management; we had three directors of nursing in the first few months. 

“The staffing profile got progressively worse as senior staff left because they were not prepared to put up with inferior conditions.”