Page 2082 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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MR KAINE: You will not be; but you will be claiming credit from the sidelines even though you, Minister, did nothing in this connection except talk about it. So we have these great deceptions. These are facts that relate to this budget at the macro level. When you start looking at the micro level the same sort of thing applies.
I come back to an area that interests me greatly, and that is the needs of the ageing. The Government pays great lip-service. The Chief Minister talks constantly about social justice. Constantly, she talks about how committed she is to satisfying the needs of the ageing. I pointed out that the submission that was put to her this year by the Council on the Ageing runs to seven pages, and the preamble to it makes the point that the resources currently devoted by the ACT Government to the ageing do not meet the need. There are waiting lists for most, if not all, government funded services which service the ageing. That is just in the preamble. Then there are seven pages of initiatives, carefully researched by the Council on the Ageing, that they believe this Government should be taking to satisfy, even in some small measure, the needs of the increasingly ageing population of this Territory.
They range from a convalescent unit which successive governments have been talking about since 1990. The Alliance Government first proposed the notion of a convalescent unit for people leaving hospital who were incapable of caring for themselves because of their frailty or who had nowhere else to go to while they convalesced. There should be a place for them to go. This relates very strongly to ageing people, many of whom are simply physically incapable of going home after major surgery, for example, and taking care of themselves. In many cases they have nobody to look after them. That was 1990. That was part of the restructuring of the health system that the Alliance Government put forward as the only major restructuring project ever undertaken under self-government.
This Government took on that project, although they did not want to; they fought it every inch of the way. Their first action after taking government was to try to knock off the closure of the Royal Canberra Hospital. Then they discovered that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now you find them chortling about opening up new facilities at the Woden Valley Hospital as though this was their own idea and they thought of it all themselves. A convalescent unit was part of that. If they go back and read what I said about the hospital restructuring program in 1990, part of it was a convalescent unit. In 1994 the Council on the Ageing is still highlighting this as one of their major concerns - that there is no convalescent capability in this city. What does the Government do about it? Absolutely nothing.
Jindalee has been acknowledged for years as being totally unsuitable for the purpose for which it is being used. It was not designed for that purpose. It is unsuitable for it. Jindalee, again, was part of the proposals put forward by the Alliance Government in 1990. It was time to build some service-specific facilities for those people. In 1994 the Government still talks about it. The Council on the Ageing is still tirading, saying that it is one of the major deficiencies in servicing for the ageing. What does the Government do about it? Absolutely nothing. At least Mr Berry had the decency to talk about relocating some element of it to Acton Peninsula. That whole concept about putting anything on Acton Peninsula has been blown out of the water.
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