Page 4081 - Week 15 - Thursday, 17 December 1992
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Madam Speaker, recommendation No. 25 is that the ACT Government should consider the employment of multilingual staff in areas such as community nursing and home help. The ability of all our citizens to have equal access to the facilities provided for the aged is a social justice issue. The Government must ensure that there are no artificial barriers placed before any of our community. The lack of language skills is such a barrier. I have seen the problems that have resulted as our postwar immigrants have aged and lost the second language skills that they have acquired whilst in Australia.
The second recommendation I wish to address is that it is vital that ethnic bodies be consulted regarding the needs of their aged. In the report mention has been made of the different cultural aspects of some of the groups, and the differences between those groups and the traditional Australian way of thinking about our aged. We all think differently about how our aged should be treated, just as it happens in ethnic groups. One of the things that I have noted is that, if a married couple are aged and have difficulty, they will stay together no matter how the difficulty arises. They will not go into a home together. However, once one of the members of the family is lost you find that they are looking for help from us or from the community. We need to look at this. That brings in the language problem because they have been used to being at home and speaking the language of their home country that they were born in. If they go to a home where nobody speaks this language they are completely isolated from the people around them. Respite care is vital for all sectors of our community and the ethnic groups must be encouraged to make full use of the services that are available.
Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the other committee members and the committee secretary, Greg McIntosh, for the fine work that has gone into the report. I would also like to thank all those who sent in submissions and appeared before us in public hearings. I also thank the people in all the areas that we visited that Ms Ellis has mentioned. In closing, I would like to say that the Government can do only so much. We must all work to obtain a feeling within the community that our aged are an asset and a resource whose value cannot be underestimated.
MR CORNWELL (12.04): Madam Speaker, I rise as a member of the committee to support all the recommendations, obviously. I would like to limit my comments to chapter 7, which our chairman has already referred to. It is headed "'Gaps' in the current provision of aged accommodation". This reference began the inquiry and I do not believe that it is a problem that we have really solved, although that is not a criticism of the committee. The difficulties that we experienced in trying to address this were considerable. I would hope that, in time to come, people may be able to come up with some other alternatives to try to assist people who really do not quite fit into the category of asset rich, cash poor home owners or purchasers. In fact, they are somewhere in between.
Ms Ellis has identified the situation of people perhaps having a home that is worth $150,000. Obviously, the return that they would get from the sale of that would not entitle them to move into a government aged persons unit. Equally, it would be too little for the upper section of the market of townhouses or that type of facility. Essentially, the problem is that it is what the market will bear. It is a question of supply and demand. The demand for higher-cost facilities certainly still exists in the ACT. In order that these people in the middle bracket can be accommodated, some government intervention will be required. Otherwise, they will continue to miss out because the laws of supply and demand will continue to operate.
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