Page 993 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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developed for housing, thus boosting the population and maintaining school enrolments. But why would people want to move to an area with no health centre?
Ms Follett: And no schools.
MR BERRY: And no schools. This sort of drum beating, in my view, sends a very distorted view to the community, but the community out there are fairly observant and are awake to what this Government is about. On the one hand we have people like Bill Stefaniak saying that there is a potential for development in the Weston Creek area, and on the other hand we have the Government tearing the guts out of the community by pillaging the community assets.
Mr Humphries: Emotive language.
MR BERRY: But it is true. The Minister says that it is emotive language. Well, the withdrawal of your community health centre is an emotional issue. A lot of aged people, frail people and disadvantaged people are emotionally upset by what this Government has done. If the Minister has not recognised that now, things are crook. The impact on the Weston Creek community has never been assessed. This is a knee-jerk reaction to the needs of the Government, caught by its bungle over school closures. Like the Therapy Centre, their location was not known when the decision to close the health centre was taken.
The Minister was not aware of the Therapy Centre, I am sure. Without any consultation on their fate, it was decided that they would have to move. And what has this move meant? It has meant that there has been significant dislocation of community services and, of course, an increased cost of rent which will have to be subsidised by government. We know that the rent for the Weston Creek Health Centre was about $100 a week and in their new location it could be somewhere between $1,000 and $2,000 a week, depending on the outcome of negotiations on their future digs. Then again, we are not quite sure what might happen to them. It could be that they will end up in the Weston Creek Health Centre again.
What is most important as far as the Labor Opposition is concerned is that we get that health centre open, to provide community health services to the people of Weston Creek who need them. Bill Stefaniak ought to be fighting for that. The result of the Government's short-sighted decision to close schools means that the people of the ACT will have an extra burden of up to $100,000 for the provision of rent to the Weston Creek Community Service.
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