Page 1685 - Week 08 - Thursday, 28 September 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
instead of being locked in institutions. The sum of $62,000 has been allocated for that - another positive aspect of the budget.
New occasional care facilities at Dickson, the provision of a much needed service in the area of Dickson which has so far not had the benefit of an occasional child centre, will be put into place with an allocation of $30,000. Counsellors will be employed to alleviate critical incident stress and $60,000 will be allocated to that. That will help. I am sorry Ms Maher is not here, because she complained that nurses were being disadvantaged. Of course, the critical incident stress component of the budget will be of assistance to nurses in the performance of their work, as it will to other workers, including policemen, Mr Stefaniak, and other emergency workers.
On public health, there has always been a positive focus. The use of funding raised from the increased tobacco tax will focus on health promotion as a priority for this Government. As announced previously, we will set up a health promotion fund for which we expect we will have a budget in this financial year of $660,000. I would thank Mr Duby for his contribution to this fund!
Priority, of course, is given to social justice issues, and we see the introduction of the Food Services Act as a means by which appropriate food services legislation for the provision of proper food sales in nice, clean conditions will be ensured. Of course, that will require the upgrading of legislation to protect public health in the food area, and $234,000 has been allocated for that.
In the hospital area there has been a replacement and upgrading program developed for high-technology equipment for patient care services. In this way we will be able to ensure that the people of the ACT and the surrounding areas have access to the latest in modern health care because, as we all know, technology in the health care area is developing quickly and it is important that we keep up with those developments.
Announced during the course of the budget was a priority to make a decision on the steering committee's report of the review of health services in the ACT. Of course, the Government's decision in that respect will take the ACT into the twenty-first century with its hospitals. The establishment of a child abuse assessment clinic is another important feature of the budget.
As I am running out of time, I will skip across some of those areas, all of which are important, and deal with some other important issues in the budget, in the construction area and in the capital works area. The sum of $4.4m has been allocated for a nurse education building at the CCAE so that they will no longer have to operate in temporary premises. The sum of $480,000 has been allocated for a child-care facility in the parliamentary zone for the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .