Page 2897 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 1991
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It is good to see that Ms Follett was so keen in 1989. It is a pity that her keenness does not extend into 1991.
To summarise the situation at the end of the committee's work, we have recommendations saying that there is an urgent need for a convalescent unit, first of all; that there is a pressing need for a hospice to care for the terminally ill; we have to build or relocate the Jindalee Nursing Home; and we should be strongly encouraging the construction of retirement homes in the ACT. Those recommendations became the cornerstone of the Alliance Government's policy on the ageing. Indeed, they formed the basis of our Blueprint for the Ageing, which was released a few months after that report was handed down. It is a very important document on dealing with the problems of the ageing in the ACT.
We were in the process of looking for a new site for the Jindalee Nursing Home. We had identified at least half of the site in the sense that we might split the old Jindalee Nursing Home into two sites. We had committed ourselves to the establishment of a hospice and indeed had set money aside for the forward design of that hospice. We had announced the establishment of a convalescent care facility on the Acton Peninsula and had costed it. In the case of the RSL retirement village, we had allocated land on Lake Ginninderra for that village to be constructed. These carefully made plans of the Alliance Government have simply been thrown into disarray in the 2 months since Labor has occupied the fifth floor of this building.
Mr Kaine: They have been thrown into the trash can.
MR HUMPHRIES: Indeed, they have been thrown into the trash can by an uncaring government - a government that does not care about the needs of the ageing and is prepared to throw them to one side in its broader electoral interest.
On Tuesday, 6 August, the Health Minister announced, in response to a question from Dr Kinloch in this place, that the hospice had been taken off the capital works program. We learnt on Tuesday of this week - apparently with some contrition, some concern about the electoral damage that might be done by that kind of decision - that there was some sort of commitment to commence construction of that hospice some time in 1992. The reason given, incidentally, was that the Government could not afford a hospice at the present time.
I am intrigued as to how the Government will be better able to afford a hospice in the 1992-93 financial year when the impact of Commonwealth reductions in funding for the ACT will be even more severe than it is this year. Why money which was found by the Alliance Government could not have been spent in this financial year to start to build the
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