Page 997 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 19 March 1991
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In the case of many ACT services, because of the splintered nature of their operation - that has been an historical fact in the ACT; and here I am talking particularly about infant health clinics - and because of their wide scattering across the Territory, necessarily operating hours are very short. A great advantage of bringing services into more central locations and reducing the total number of operating locations is that the ACT has the capacity to operate longer services at those centres, to operate for longer periods during each working day. Many of the services now moving, for example, to the Phillip Health Centre will, in fact, be available for five days a week and working longer hours during each of those five days as compared with the operating hours at the previous Weston Creek Health Centre when it was operating as a full health centre.
The community nursing team, previously located in the Weston Creek Health Centre, delivered and delivers domiciliary health care to people in the ACT. They have been relocated to two sites - one in Kambah and the other in Phillip - due in part to the restructuring of teams as part of the nurses career structure review.
There will be no change to client services because services are delivered to clients in their own homes. What demonstrated need, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, is there for those nurses to base themselves in Weston Creek? They travel to people in their homes; so why should they be based in Weston Creek? Why could they not be based, for example, in Phillip which, in fact, is slightly more central to the whole of Canberra than is Weston Creek? I would argue that those sorts of things have been overlooked, I would say deliberately, by those opposite in their desire to paint black pictures about this Government's program of change.
Sessional services delivered by health professionals who went to Weston from Phillip for one to two sessions per week have also obviously been affected. Services have been transferred to the Phillip Community Health Centre in many cases, and I have already referred to the longer operating hours that are possible as a result of that. The sessional services that have been transferred now to Phillip include physiotherapy and podiatry. I think Mr Berry mentioned those. It is also worth mentioning that the dietitian now operating out of Phillip has a Territory-wide service to provide. There is no good demonstrated reason why that service has to be provided at Weston Creek rather than at some other central location in the ACT. On that score Mr Berry has completely failed to convince me, or anybody else listening to this debate, I imagine, that there is any imperative reason why those State-wide services have to be provided out of Weston Creek.
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