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A year or so ago the Commonwealth Government announced quite radical changes to the way nursing homes were to be funded, and the ACT Government agreed to move Jindalee to that new arrangement. That involved transferring the 86 beds in Jindalee, in the first instance, to the new Commonwealth funding standards. That involved acceptance by the ACT of a very significant Commonwealth role in the assessment of the provision of nursing home services, and that, in itself, led to the commencement of a process of change which, we would acknowledge, led to some industrial disputation last year.

What we said at the time, and said very publicly, and it has proved to be true, was that the choice for this community and those people so intimately concerned with Jindalee was a choice between a process of reform under a Labor government and facing the axe under a Liberal government - total and absolute abandonment of a role for government in the provision of nursing home services. That, tragically, has proved to be true. Within months of coming to office, Mrs Carnell abandoned a very clear Liberal election platform pledge to build two new nursing homes when Jindalee was to be abandoned. That pledge has already been abandoned, and who is to blame for Mrs Carnell abandoning her election pledges? Of course, it is the Labor Party. It is always, in Mrs Carnell's view, somebody else’s fault when she plays fast and loose with clear commitments to this community.

Mr Speaker, the fact that Jindalee, on the present site, would have a limited future has been a matter of clear public knowledge and clear public debate for some years. Jindalee was never appropriately designed as a specific purpose nursing home. Lower Jindalee, when it was built, was designed as a respite facility for psychiatric patients, and as a nursing home it has severe limitations. Jindalee also had the longstanding difficulty of being the place where a number of young people with quite severe levels of disability, usually acquired through a tragic accident or acquired through a disease, have been accommodated.

Both sides of politics for some time have made it clear that that is not an appropriate facility for young people; that young people should not be accommodated in aged care facilities. That in no way is a reflection on the level of care that they receive, because that has always been acknowledged to be excellent; but, in terms of their social needs and the social needs of their families, it is quite inappropriate for a 20-year-old to be maintained in a facility where they are surrounded by aged patients, often with dementia or other diseases of the advanced aged. Those patients were to be taken out of Jindalee and a purpose built facility was to be constructed. That was announced by the Labor Government late last year.

It was also indicated that Lower Jindalee might be closed and moved to the non-government sector. That was widely known and widely debated last year. Mrs Carnell has been making much in the last couple of days of a secret plan by the Labor Party to totally privatise Jindalee. That is stuff and nonsense, Mr Speaker. Any look at the very vigorous public debates that occurred last year about Jindalee makes it clear that the then Labor Government was floating a range of options for the future of Jindalee which involved quitting the site and altering the mix of public and private patients. This is something that Labor always has been prepared to look at pragmatically.

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