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Mr Berry: I can tell you where the Tuggeranong Health Centre is. Do you remember the day that you could not even find it?

MR KAINE: But you do not care about the fact that there are no health facilities in Tuggeranong. There is an increasing need for health facilities that older people can use. Just forget for the moment the young people, the kids and all of that. Where are those facilities? They are not even on the drawing board. This is Mr Whitecross's forward thinking, promising Labor Party. It is a sad commentary, I think, that there was nothing there to provide for these people. The Liberal Party has said that we believe that there is a need for increased medical facilities there. We think that there is a need, at some stage in the future, for a hospital there. We have said that there is a need for increasing accommodation for aged people; people who need hostel care, for example. We have recognised that there is a need there. You lot did not even acknowledge that there was a shortfall there.

I come back to the problem that there is a shortfall of resources. The Government cannot provide everything, and it may be that this Government will use its intelligence and go to the private sector and say, “Are you able to provide some of the facilities that are needed there?”. We are not going to have the budgetary resources for some years because Mother Hubbard left the cupboard bare. We are not going to have the resources available to us until we pull ourselves out of the fiscal hole that we are in and additional resources become available. But at least we know that there is a shortfall, and we acknowledge that there is a problem in some of these areas.

I, for one, would like to see increased facilities. If you sit back, the list is endless; starting with child care, through the recreational needs of young people, schools, work opportunities, right through to the range of facilities and infrastructure that the older people in the community need. I would suggest that, if you did a check of every ACT government agency today, they could tell you where the shortfall lies and what needs to be done in their own areas of responsibility to fill it. But every year the capital works program comes around and they make their bids; those bids have to be accommodated in the capital works program; and the government, at the end of the day, has to make available what resources it can. You can never satisfy all those needs; you have to program them over a period of years.

The gaps will be filled - not necessarily as quickly as some people would like; not necessarily as quickly as I would like, or Mr De Domenico would like. We live in Tuggeranong. We want to see our people there have the facilities that they need; just as Mr Osborne does, and, I hope, Mr Wood and Mr Whitecross do. I do not think that we should be fighting about these things; we should be able to agree amongst ourselves on what is needed, and we should be able to sit down together and figure out how best to provide them, instead of sitting on opposite sides of the chamber and fighting about it. I do not see that there is any merit at all in that. I do not seek to gain any political kudos out of criticising you people for what you might or might not have done in the time that you were in government. I would ask that you do not do the same to us. I say to Mr Osborne that, with a sense of purpose - a common sense of purpose shared by the people in this room today, and some cooperative action in conjunction with our public servants, who do know what the shortfall is - we will satisfy the requirements. As I say, it may take a little longer than some people would like, but they will be met.


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