Page 4450 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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Mr Berry: Simplistic shroud waving. That is all you are good for.
MRS CARNELL: Ask Ms Ellis directly behind you. Do you want to turn around and ask Ms Ellis?
Mr Berry: No, I am listening to your speech.
MRS CARNELL: No, you are not. You are talking.
Mr Berry: I am listening to your speech.
MRS CARNELL: You are talking.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, please!
MRS CARNELL: That was the overriding statement that kept coming through. Yes, it is appropriate to move elderly people out of crisis care accommodation, but unless they have family support they cannot look after themselves at home. So where do we send them? The only place we can send them is to a convalescent care facility that we do not have, or to a crisis care facility to be looked after for at least a week or two when they are first discharged from hospital. That is really not available and is not what crisis care was set up to do; but, unfortunately, more and more, it is what crisis care is doing in Canberra. I would be very disappointed if the Government did not take on the convalescent care facility as a priority. If they do not, we will continue to see elderly people taking up beds in our crisis care facilities inappropriately to them and to our health facilities.
Like Ms Szuty, I would like to see the actual plans for Lower Jindalee. With the closure, hopefully, of Lower Jindalee, there is an obvious capacity to sell that site and hopefully build a new facility for the younger disabled - something that the committee felt very strongly about. I would like to find out from the Chief Minister whether the two respite care beds that were to be established at Upper Jindalee actually have come to pass, because they are certainly sorely needed.
MR KAINE (11.47): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I think that by now the Chief Minister must be beginning to realise that her response to this excellent report has not been received very favourably. I would suspect that it is not only the members of this Assembly who are disappointed with it. The people out there who are the real victims of the Government's inaction on this matter must be making the same judgment. This is a failed Government response. The response from the Chief Minister on 15 September is like so many responses from her. It has lots of nice words in it; but, at the end of the day, none of the hard decisions have been addressed and we get no indication from the Government that they really took the report seriously. It is the usual honey-coated pill prescribed by the Follett Government, but it leaves a nasty, bitter aftertaste in your mouth.
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