Page 2089 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 May 1991
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ACT community that we need. This vital area of education, providing technical and other services with an increased range of competence to the ACT community, is being choked because of the mean-minded attitude of this Government.
I would like the Chief Minister, in this debate, to respond and tell us how it is that TAFE is meeting its target of a 6 per cent cut year after year. How is it going; how is the flow of private funds coming? In other parliaments I could ask that question and it would be answered within this debate. Let us hope that we can have the same response here.
A further matter I would ask the Chief Minister about relates to the provision of a hospice in the ACT. That is a matter for Mr Humphries, but I raise it since the Chief Minister has issued a blueprint, or a follow-up on the blueprint for the aged in the ACT. So, maybe the Chief Minister or maybe the Minister for Health should be the one to respond. We all agree that a hospice is needed. I thought, some considerable time ago now, that we were not far from having the benefit of a hospice. The Social Policy Committee recommended it, and it was no great feat on our part because it was pretty obvious that it was urgently needed. It did not really need a recommendation to that effect.
In his response to the Social Policy Committee's report the Chief Minister said, "Yes, we are going to provide it". I will freely acknowledge that steps were taken by the Government to do so. As part of that process, Minister Humphries or his department consulted with the ACT Hospice Society - from memory, I believe that that is its title. It is a body that is representative of a great variety of interests for the aged and health in the ACT. It is a highly reputable body and one which gave excellent advice. But, for some reason, the process got fouled up. I do not know what happened, but the Minister then went and said, "Let us go somewhere else and get some consultants to advise on this".
Mr Humphries: Yes, recommended by the Hospice Society.
MR WOOD: I believe not. You had better check that because I am not making these statements off the top of my head. I am making them after I have been briefed by the Hospice Society. And what happened, of course, was that they went to a consultant who has taken an added period of time - - -
Mr Humphries: A professor of palliative care.
MR WOOD: Yes, an expert; but he is coming up with, or is likely to come up with, a philosophically different proposal. One must wonder whether this is some part of the process; perhaps the early recommendations were not those that were really desired by bureaucrats or Ministers or somewhere in that process.
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