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In response to growing waiting lists for respite care and personal services for people with disabilities and the frail aged, an additional $900,000 of ACT and Commonwealth funding has been made available this year. This represents a significant increase of 13 per cent. There is, as noted earlier, extra funding for the improved management of complex cases. These involve mainly children who have a range of complex intellectual, developmental, behavioural and physical disabilities.

In the area of mental health, which has been something of a black hole for successive governments, the implementation of the long overdue national mental health plan will accelerate. Total outlays will increase by 7 per cent compared with 1994-95, and this includes the appointment of a professor of psychiatry at the Clinical School. Specialist services to children and adolescents will increase with the appointment of a trainee child psychiatrist. Additional resources will also enable the intensive care rehabilitation team to provide intensive and individualised services to persons with serious mental illness. A pilot case management program will be undertaken to develop models that will improve continuity of care and access to resources across mental health services.

Mr Speaker, in health and community care, our commitment to reform will be reflected in more dollars reaching the sharp end. This can be achieved only if administration is reduced. To this end, we will be seeking expressions of interest for the sale or lease of Melba and Kippax health centres as going concerns, similar to the process that is occurring with the management of Upper Jindalee Nursing Home. Services at Melba Health Centre have been allowed to run down in the last three years to the point where the centre is almost empty. Consistent with the Assembly's decision to offer private general practitioners access to all community health centres on a bulk-billing basis, we believe that the health services offered by both Kippax and Melba in the future will actually expand, because they could not get less at Melba.

For the first time too in the ACT, the importance and value of improving the health of the community through the sponsorship of health promotion is to be enshrined. A new stand-alone Health Promotion Authority will begin operation following the passing of legislation later this year. By allocating 5 per cent of the tobacco franchise fee, a record $2.1m will be set aside this year alone. Compared with funding of $837,000 in the final year of the Labor Government, moneys available for the promotion of healthy lifestyles through sport, the arts and community activities will more than double.

Members will recall our election promise to maintain education funding in real terms over the next three years. That promise is translated into reality today with the allocation of an additional $7.7m this year. While we have come under fire for this commitment, this Government recognises that education is probably one of the ACT's most precious social and economic assets. Within this framework, the Department of Education and Training will be addressing our commitment to improving literacy and numeracy standards, and the resourcing of a balanced sport and physical recreation program in the school curriculum. School-based management will also be strengthened to ensure that schools have the maximum possible control over the management of their resources.

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