Page 3682 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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They are excellent sounding words, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker - absolutely brilliant. He then went on to say:
In the Tuggeranong area, for example, there is a high proportion of young families and adolescents. The proportion of elderly in Tuggeranong is also increasing as the population ages.
Once again, these are fine sounding words - very good, excellent. However, words are cheap. Mr Berry has now seen fit to take over the reins of government. For the second time he is attempting to make a go of the health portfolio. At this stage I am not quite sure whether a really good report card is going to come in. However, I guess time will tell.
I would suggest, Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, that the title of that seminar is really what we should be talking about this afternoon, if we are to address the issues raised in the debate by the title of the MPI. The issue is community health and the ability of effective community health delivery to reduce the overall budget by meeting the problems when they are small and cheaper to resolve rather than letting them fester away in the suburbs without adequate support and end up in either our courts, with often very tragic consequences, or our hospitals.
Preventive medicine is the key to this problem. Frankly, I have seen little of this in the budget papers and the answers given to us by both the Minister for Health and the Minister for Community Services when questions about the provision of services to the fast developing outer suburbs of Canberra have been raised.
Community nursing and associated facilities, like immunisation clinics and baby health clinics, could be made available when and where they are needed, not at centralised locations which often require many bus trips with a number of young children under five, for example, requiring attention. Every answer that I receive to questions about proactive planning, rather than reactive planning after the problems have manifested themselves, is to the negative; there was no information, no indication of what was going to be done. (Quorum formed)
MADAM TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: I am sorry, Mr Jensen, but the time for the discussion has elapsed.
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