Page 4451 - Week 14 - Thursday, 9 December 1993
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I will not traverse all of the recommendations, as I think that enough has been said about them. The fact is that there were 26 recommendations in this report and they fell broadly into three categories. The first category has only one recommendation in it and it is the smallest of them. That is recommendation 4, which recommended continuing to exempt the not-for-profit sector of the aged accommodation industry from land tax. That actually expects the Government to do nothing, so they should be able to deal with that one.
The next group recommends policies and legislative action involving little or no expense on the part of the Government. They include, for example, the inclusion in Cabinet submissions of information about how a new policy will impact on the ageing; giving good health and active ageing high priority; allowing more planning flexibility for dual occupancy and separate titles; the home swap scheme, and new maintenance policies for ACT Housing Trust properties occupied by elderly persons and others. All that required was a decision on the part of the Government to actually do something, but no great expense, no great effort.
The third category is the one that contains all the issues that required some real commitment from the Government. These are the gut issues, the measures that actually require some expenditure, some planning and some decision making on the part of the Government; and, of course, these are the ones they ducked, without exception. The report talks about adequate nursing home beds, efficient delivery of housing and community care program services, a day care facility at Victoria Shakespeare Cottage, more respite care beds in nursing homes, a North Canberra crisis care facility, which other speakers have referred to, a convalescent care facility, longer hours at day care centres and the like.
These are the ones that the Government has simply ducked. They note them, and that is very nice; but these are the things that the ageing community out there needs and we have no indication from this Government. When you read the Government's response you have to come to the conclusion that they went through it very carefully to decide how they could avoid taking any action. All of their responses say, "Well, we think it is a good idea. We note that. We will get the Commonwealth to fix it. We will ask the private sector to fix it". There is no commitment from this Government to fix anything. Where in their capital works program is there anything that flows from this report? The answer is nowhere; there is absolutely nothing.
Any government, I submit, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, would find itself troubled by the prospect of having to implement all the recommendations flowing from this report. It indicates the results of decades of neglect of an increasingly ageing population; one that the Chief Minister keeps talking about but does nothing about. They do involve, in total, considerable expenditure. It is a bit of a problem.
How does this Government approach the report? It has approached it by simply avoiding the issue. The Chief Minister's statement conveys a response without a structure, without assigning priorities to what can be done. In fact, it is scarcely acknowledging that anything can be done. These are the questions that the ageing community is confronting every day and that they are worried about, and they want to see some action from the Government.
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