Page 3426 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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exclusively for these purposes. I think Mr Kaine adequately put that case. In fact, to have facilities for rehabilitation and aged care isolated at Acton Peninsula would be a disaster - a position that I understand is shared by the ACT Council on the Ageing, a group of people who, one would suggest, would know something about care of the aged.
Mr De Domenico: At least we talk to put people like that, anyway.
MRS CARNELL: That is right. Let us see what Richard Glenn and Associates had to say on the subject of a nursing home at Acton Peninsula. The Acton health facilities planning study was commissioned by this Labor Government at a cost, I think, of some $25,000 to prepare. This Government should pay attention to the finding of its own expensive study, and Michael Moore would be advised to do likewise. Amongst other things, the study says:
The site selected for the nursing home should facilitate community access and promote the residents' independence and quality of life.
Further, it states:
The building should be located to maximise views from the nursing home.
It goes on:
Generally, residents find views on "people activity" more interesting than passive landscapes.
That is at odds with what other members have said, yet this is in the $25,000 report. When considering the relocation of a 40-bed nursing home to Acton Peninsula, the study says:
Unless the National Capital Planning Authority which is currently planning the redevelopment of the Acton Peninsula approves a residential development adjacent to the peninsula, such a location would not meet the outcome standards of the Commonwealth Government.
That means that, unless we have residential development at Acton Peninsula as the National Capital Planning Authority has suggested, a nursing home on Acton Peninsula would not be funded, and the ACT Government would end up paying. That is obviously not appropriate. Therefore, if we are going to have aged care facilities on Acton, we need residential development as well.
The unfortunate thing is that too many people want to hark back to what went on before on Acton Peninsula, and their determination to reinvent Royal Canberra Hospital may lead to some health facilities being very inappropriately located. What the Richard Glenn study stresses - and, as I have already said, the ACT Council on the Ageing - is that convalescing patients want to be part of the community. Cutting them off from the community is the last thing they want, and it is the last thing that is of any use at all for their health outcomes. These facilities ought to be close to shops and close to other centres of activity such as senior citizens clubs, church groups, places they can go to during their convalescence time. They do not spend their months convalescing in bed or staring out the window at the lake. They need to be reintegrated with the community, and you have to have a community to reintegrate with.
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