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I can speak to you as a person who has defended government-provided aged care services in this place for many years. I stood on the picket line when they sold Canberra Nursing Home. I can assure the people of the ACT that this Labor Government was never going to sell out of the provision of aged care in the ACT. We would always have been involved in the provision of aged care services in the ACT. We would always have been involved in the provision of nursing homes, and we have a record of sticking to our promises. We never crossed our fingers behind our backs.

We said in our policy that we would construct a purpose built facility for younger disabled people currently residing at Jindalee Nursing Home. We have a record of sticking to our promises. You have not. The community are fully aware of that. Mr Speaker, this lot opposite continue to try to distract the community with lies and deception.

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Berry, put that away, please.

MR BERRY: This community and this Assembly must blunt Mrs Carnell's axe, because she is about to lay into the community, to lay into our publicly owned facilities and our publicly provided services.

Mrs Carnell: And balance the budget, and get rid of the $120m hole that you guys left.

MR BERRY: Here she goes again. Henny-Penny is at it again; the sky is going to fall in. More deception; all the double counting, rhetoric and lies that you would need, Mr Speaker. We do not need any more of that in this community. What we want is a solid government that is committed to services to the community, like Mrs Carnell promised before the election when she had her fingers crossed behind her back. We have a situation, Mr Speaker, where Jindalee Nursing Home is going to be attacked with blind rhetoric, in this Kennett-like move. Mrs Carnell has a clear message for the people of the ACT - “Go and get Jeffed”. There is no clearer message than, “Go and get Jeffed; we are blinded by our own rhetoric, and we are locked into all of these ridiculous ideological privatisation outcomes”.

As well, Mr Speaker, the Liberals have decided to move on the community medical practitioners. Mrs Carnell has long been an enemy of the community medical practitioners and the service that they provide to the community. Many of us will remember the attacks that she made on them during the course of the last Assembly. Of course, Mrs Carnell shut up when it was proven that the wages of the community medical practitioners were basically paid by Medicare. She had nothing to hang her hat on. What she wants to do now is to drive those people out of a service, and cut the services which go with those community medical centres.

Labor set this up years ago. Yes, it is a unique facility in the ACT, and it is one that is well worth preserving. Again, if this goes, it will be gone forever, because the next move by Mrs Carnell will be to charge the doctors who come in there as private medical practitioners market rates for their rent. The allied health professionals will be booted out, and there will be a savage reduction in the quality of care which is provided to the community. This service in the ACT provides a benchmark for other private practitioners to follow. It also provides an area of competition, which ensures that there is

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