Ms GRIERSON (12:15 PM) —My electorate is not only very beautiful but certainly the most innovative area in Australia. Today I want to draw attention to a situation facing a national organisation which is based in my electorate of Newcastle. That organisation, the Australian Resource Centre for Healthcare Innovations, assists all health practitioners and professionals around this country. It does so with a staff of only seven people, yet it is perhaps one of the most effective and quality innovation programs in the health care sector in this country. To provide this service, ARCHI, as it is affectionately known by health professionals, has a web site, an e-library, an inquiry service, a Net news reader service and it holds discussion forums and seminars all around the country. Its achievements are well documented.

Last year there were over four million hits on its web site. I am sure that most people would know that that is an outstanding number of hits, demonstrating a high level of demand from health professionals. ARCHI has 2,500 e-resources available. Most of those e-resources, it is important to know, are actually placed there by medical practitioners and professionals at no cost. Their copyright is waived and they are provided free to assist the profession in the provision of quality health management. ARCHI particularly aims for quality and safety in clinical management and clinical practice and has 16,000 health care professionals subscribing to that service.

The Department of Health and Ageing has provided about $2½ million to ARCHI since it began in 1997 under the National Demonstration Hospitals Program, but now the department wants to close that program down; it says that program is finished. It says that one of its most outstanding outcomes is the service provided by ARCHI but it can no longer fund it. Apparently, in a response on behalf of the minister, the acute care strategies spokesperson from the Department of Health and Ageing, Ms Alex Rankin, said:

I have an offer for the minister and his department: for less than half a million dollars per year, ARCHI can provide that service and disseminate that information not only to the department but to every public hospital, every GP, every specialist and every aged care facility in Australia. Half a million dollars does not seem to be very much given that the government are spending $21 million on an advertising and vote-buying campaign to save themselves and their Medicare safety net. In the Hunter and in Newcastle, we are very happy to forgo that advertising campaign. We will save you half a million dollars, Minister, and you can spend that to save ARCHI, a professional service that assists the whole health care sector in Australia.

Let me explain who uses this service. I am told that health advisers from almost every state and every health minister in Australia use that service. I know that the shadow minister for health in Western Australia, one of Tony Abbott's colleagues, attended a seminar recently on emergency demand issues, presented by ARCHI. I also know that the member for Boothby in this parliament, Dr Andrew Southcott, who launched ARCHI's web site in South Australia a year or so ago, praised that service and I know would be a strong supporter of it. Not only does that service go out to the whole country; it is an outstanding service for rural, remote and isolated practitioners and professionals. It is something they can log on to instantly and where they can get advice on best practice within the health sector anywhere around the country. If you want information about the best clinical management of diabetes, the best management of emergency care and the best new developments in aged care, ARCHI has that information.

To stop that service would be equivalent to stopping our library service for members of parliament. I know we have more than seven members of staff in the Parliamentary Library to support us, but ARCHI provides a similar service for every medical professional in Australia with just seven members of staff. It is suggested that the cost of most of those inquiries would be $1,000 if you were to do them privately. With 2,500 searches done for professionals a year, that is equivalent to a saving of $2½ million to health professionals—so at $500,000 per annum it is a bargain. It certainly does protect the standards of safety and management of health care in Australia. I call on the government to continue its funding past June this year. ARCHI deserves that and so do the Australian people.