Page 172 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 May 1989
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encounter. If you talk to any group associated in any way with the matters of the ageing, it does not matter whether you talk about whether people want to stay in their own home, about people who need to be put into hostel-type accommodation, about people who need hospital care in geriatric wards, any aspect that you care to mention in connection with the ageing, there is an obvious shortage already of the kind of community facilities that are required.
If there is a shortage now and we do nothing about it, given that our ageing population is increasing rapidly, and much more rapidly than anywhere else in Australia, then in five years' time we will have a real problem on our hands. The community will suffer enormously because appropriate provision has not been made for this ageing sector of the community. These people, I submit, have paid their dues to society, they have worked during their lifetimes, they have made contributions through their tax, through their obligations to the community in general, and in their increasing years they are entitled to the consideration of this community.
I submit, Mr Speaker, that the only way to find out what we must do is to inquire as to the nature of the problem, its magnitude, and to attempt to set down a program by which this Assembly over the next five years can address this increasing problem. Having developed a strategy and a plan, we can make sure that financial provision is made in successive years' budgets to provide the kinds of facilities that these people need, that they are entitled to and that they deserve. So, instead of establishing a select committee, I submit that the Social Policy Committee can well undertake this work as its first reference.
DR KINLOCH (12.17): I do thank my young friend, Trevor Kaine, for his motion, which the Residents Rally strongly supports. We support it for the obvious reason as to the merits involved in it. I would like to raise another area here. Of course, the ageing in our community need our every support in all kinds of ways, not only physical and material, but also psychological and in terms of the whole setting of society.
I would like also to argue this point, especially in relation to jobs and the future of this city. We know that education has become an industry. So it should be with facilities for the aged. It is not only a matter of facilities for the aged; it is a whole area of economic development. I urge that the kind of thing that has been done in Wakefield Gardens, for example - and again I urge members of the Assembly to go and see that development - that kind of development, that kind of housing, that kind of economic activity related to the needs of the ageing is something that will be beneficial not only to the society for its aged members but for all other people as well.
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