Page 2455 - Week 07 - Thursday, 4 August 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Returning to health, our committed and caring health and community service workers provide care for people not only in our hospitals but in a range of community settings. Providing that care in wellbeing and prevention and early intervention when a health issue emerges means that we can support people closer to home and to recover sooner. It means reducing wait times for treatment and making it easier for people to access quality, affordable health care.
The budget funds important health initiatives, which I want to emphasise: 170 additional full-time positions for health care this year and next; $16.4 million to expand the allied health workforce and to support more services after hours; $3 million to expand the nurse practitioner workforce, including at walk-in centres; $7 million to support the health workforce with psychosocial wellbeing, address occupational violence and embed a positive safety culture across our health services; and $37.5 million to expand mental health services that we know work well, provide services in locations closer to home and introduce new services that will help fill gaps. These are all important investments, investing in the people that are at the heart of our community.
As the Greens always say: we are for people and for the planet. I have talked about the climate change emergency, the biggest threat facing our planet today. In the midst of this emergency, it can be easy to overlook its twin challenge, the extinction crisis. The recent ACT State of the Environment report has sharpened our focus on the need to solve the twin climate and nature crises together, rather than in isolation. That is why it is so critical that this budget delivers $3 million over the next two years to protect, connect and restore nature in the city and to maximise habitat connectivity and wildlife corridors. While some of this work will shape our city’s future development, it also includes the restoration of 20 sites across the city vital for habitat connectivity and climate cooling.
A strong and enduring theme for the ACT Greens has been supporting the contributions of our local environment volunteers and our citizen scientists, people who know and love their patch of our bush capital like no-one else. In this vein, the Connecting People, Connecting Nature initiative also enhances the Canberra Nature Map platform to better listen to and integrate citizen science contributions to identifying important species and habitat. This builds on our work last year, expanding the ACT environment grants and delivering long-term funding to our hardworking environment groups. Some people might overlook these investments or see them as insignificant in the grander scheme of the budget. They are not. They are a critical response to the environmental challenges we face.
I do want to draw attention to some specific elements of this budget that people might not notice at first glance, but they are vital investments that signal the government’s intent to help turn around disadvantage in a positive and collaborative way. In the justice space, our mantra is to build communities not prisons. The ACT Greens say that we must approach justice in an evidence-based and people-centric way. More reliance on prisons makes our communities less safe and creates unnecessary suffering. We want to keep people out of incarceration and help treat the problems that are seeing people enter the justice system in the first place. It is another ambitious and long-term Greens policy that strives for a reimagined society. And it is again
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video