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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 2631 ..

Mr Berry: I will come to it.

MRS CARNELL: Okay, fair enough.

Mr Berry: Will you resign when I find it? No.

MRS CARNELL: You will have to find it. We said "long-term casuals"; we stick by that. That means that casuals who have worked regularly for longer than 12 months will be covered. Other casual staff will be placed on casual lists at Woden Valley Hospital or elsewhere in Health, and a number of the other issues raised by the union have been covered by the Government. I think that negates point No. 2 because, really, we are doing exactly that for long-term casuals - not for all casual staff, not for people who worked once six months ago, but for long-term people who have worked regularly. They should be looked after, and they will be.

Point No. 4 says:

maintain all ancillary health services at government-owned health centres at a level at least equal to that which existed when the Liberals took office.

I tell you what; there were a lot of services that were too jolly low when we took office. I do not think that mental health services in the community are up to scratch. I want to improve them. I do not think that Gungahlin has adequate family services, or adequate child-care services. I want to improve them. The only way, as we know, within a sensible health service with a limited amount of dollars, to improve services in areas of need is to move services from areas where they are starting to be not used as much into areas where they are. The previous Government did that all the time.

When we look at baby health clinics, what did the previous Government do? Cluster clinics; it closed a whole lot of them. What about school dental services? Cluster clinics. Why was that done? That was done to get better utilisation of the services within the budget. Mr Connolly and Mr Berry got up in this place and defended those actions. Interestingly, this side of the house accepted those decisions. We said we had to keep monitoring them to make sure that people got those services, but everybody in any health system needs to move services as demographics change within a health arena. As an area that used to have a lot of babies becomes older, services need to change. It is patently ridiculous to suggest that you will keep a baby health clinic open in an area such as, say, Red Hill which may not have the usage, but not be able to put aged care services into Narrabundah where they are needed, simply because we cannot move services around. If they are really serious about this part of the motion, I am stunned. I am not surprised that Health was in such a mess when we took over government earlier this year, because that shows a total lack of understanding about what we are doing as a government, or what we should be doing to make sure that services are there on the ground for people who need them.

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