Page 1464 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
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I have already said I welcome the initiatives in the paper, but there are other areas that have not been addressed. As members will be aware, the Social Policy Committee is currently looking into the needs of the ageing and I am sure that improvements and recommendations in the HACC area will be forthcoming. It would not be proper to discuss the recommendations the committee is likely to make. Suffice to say that HACC initiatives through funding have a huge saving as against the cost in institutionalised care.
I would also like to place on record, Mr Speaker, recognition of the excellent services some of the HACC-funded services provide in the ACT, and I will cite just a few: Red Cross Home Help; COTA; the community services run at Tuggeranong, Weston Creek and Woden; handy help; and the like.
I note that the Minister in the paper referred to the innovative respite care and transport services. Certainly there are some innovative respite facilities in the ACT, but transport seems to be one area that is a real problem for the elderly and also the young with disabilities. I am not so sure that innovative transport facilities are in place for the elderly in this city, nor that the needs of the young disabled and the people who care for them have been adequately addressed in this particular area. As I said before, I will not pre-empt the Social Policy Committee report and the recommendations on the needs of the ageing, but I hope that the Minister will immediately see how better HACC programs can be utilised.
MR HUMPHRIES (9.17): I will be brief. The Minister describes this program as the most important program in his portfolio. That is quite a statement. We know that in the case of the Minister for Housing and Urban Services it is dogs. I would be very grateful if the other Ministers in the course of the next few days would indicate what their most important portfolio program is so that we have an idea across the board.
I can understand the Minister saying that, because the program is obviously a very important one and the statement that he made in the house some time ago on this subject indicates fairly clearly that this area has undergone some review in recent times. This review was initiated by the Federal Government and has now come down. Various changes have occurred but essentially support for a number of groups that received it previously has continued, and it goes without saying that this is a program which is at least as important from the point of its Federal Commonwealth funding as it is in terms of the ACT's contribution.
As previous speakers have said, it is about getting people out of institutions and into their own homes. Whereas previously these sorts of services were not necessarily integrated terribly well, under the HACC program it appears
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