Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (27 June) . . Page.. 2347 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Disability services is a quite good example. We will have all residential facilities for people with a disability contracted out to the private sector or the community sector. There will, of course, always be a few people with very high needs to look after - whom no-one can see as cost-effective. So, you will have this small core of people still perhaps being cared for by government, at a very high cost. At the same time, what you will have is a lack of cohesion with what is happening outside.

I support Mr Moore's concerns about the issue of responsibility. I will not go into detail about them. There are already problems of accountability and responsibility in this particular area that I have talked about, in terms of communication, in terms of what services are being provided and in terms of the experience of people in that service. At least there is some system now to address it, and we will ask this Government to be more accountable for what is happening right now in that particular area. We have grave concerns about how accountable this Government will be if these services are all hived off even further away from the Government.

Later, we will be moving an amendment to this Bill, because it looks as though, with Mr Moore's support and Mr Osborne's support, it will probably get up. But I do have to say once again that I do not believe that the community has had nearly enough time to debate this funding model and I do not accept, as Mr Humphries claimed, that, because Labor did not have the right model, this is necessarily the right model. It is a funding model which has failed overseas, and this is a management issue. I know that the problems are huge and that no-one appears to have the answers; but I cannot see how you can claim that, by the introduction of this model, you will actually be improving the situation. In fact, you could be going down a path which will lead to an even more serious situation with delivery of health services in this Territory.

MR OSBORNE (5.37): Madam Deputy Speaker, I will be brief. I will be supporting this legislation. When I looked through the two Bills and Mrs Carnell's presentation speech, I did not really see a lot in there that jumped out at me and made me think that this was the solution. It has been quite interesting today, actually. Over the last few years, it seems that there was something in place; Mr Berry changed it when he was in government; now the Libs are back in government and they are going to change it back. This seems to be one and the same situation. I have to say, though, that I am very conscious of the fact that, prior to the last election and, I believe, in the last Assembly, Mrs Carnell was very vocal about Health. When she got elected, she claimed that she had a mandate to do something about Health and that she had all the solutions. I do not know whether that is the case. I think the voters will decide that in 18 months' time. However, I agree that Health was one of the major issues which got Mrs Carnell and the Green-Liberal coalition elected. So, I agree that, to a certain extent, we do have to give Mrs Carnell a fair bit of rope. Whether or not she ends up hanging herself with it, we will have to wait and see. Also, in looking at this, we have to realise that Health is a major budget problem, and, if we were to knock back this Bill, what would the solution be? There is no doubt that something drastic is needed to try to fix up the problem. Mrs Carnell claims that this is the solution. At the next election, if Health is a major problem again - if the health budget has blown out and nothing is any better - I certainly do not want to give Mrs Carnell any ammunition to say, "We tried to fix up Health but the Independents would not let us".

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .