Page 1068 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 1990
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Leave granted.
DR KINLOCH: I would immediately like to re-echo Ms Maher's remarks regarding our concern about the ethnic community; there is no doubt at all that we have a very great commitment to that. Certainly, as an ethnic myself - an ageing ethnic at that - I would want to be supportive of all those activities. Indeed, we had witnesses about that before the committee. We discussed it. We are very much concerned with it. There is no way in which our committee was not concerned with it, and I am sure the Alliance Government will also be concerned.
I thank the Leader of the Opposition, Ms Follett, for her remarks about the excellence of the report. Strangely enough, I will have one criticism myself later. Really, in a way it is about something which came up after our report was concluded, but I am glad that it was such a bipartisan report and many of the conclusions are now being taken on by the Alliance Government.
On the question of women raised by Ms Follett of course, men are the frail sex, we die sooner - - -
Mrs Grassby: It is just our way of getting back at you; do not worry about it.
DR KINLOCH: Thank you, Mrs Grassby; we will try to survive. I would like to make the obvious point that the committee, in looking at the needs of the ageing, found itself time and time again looking at the great majority of the ageing, who indeed were women, but there were men and women involved. I assure Ms Follett that we were concerned not in a gender way with the ageing, but with all ageing across the whole spectrum.
I would like to relate this discussion to the current debate about the Royal Canberra Hospital. On pages 56 and 57, the report deals with hospitals and convalescent facilities. In particular, there is a reference to the Kearney Report and a quotation in which Dr Kearney commented that:
... the absence of an ACT convalescent/slow-stream/rehabilitation facility is another factor aggravating the problems for aged care. Elderly people need more time to recover from illnesses or injury prior to being discharged into the community, or to a nursing home. At present they must remain in hospital.
Again, I would like to stress that the very first recommendation of the committee - the No. 1 recommendation - was to create a convalescent facility. I am very pleased indeed that the Alliance Government has now made it part of its policy - a clear part of its policy, vis-a-vis, hospitals - to create that convalescent facility. We are honouring those recommendations of the
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