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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3175 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

announced that he will be undertaking a thorough inquiry to further investigate these allegations. I am concerned at the time it is taking and I am concerned at the lack of confidence some parents have in the Health Complaints Office. However, I have been assured by Mr Patterson that he will conduct a thorough investigation, and Mrs Carnell seems to have total confidence as well, so I am happy to wait and see how that investigation works out.

Because of the length of time the inquiry has taken, in early August I again raised the issue of infection prevention with Mrs Carnell's office as she was on holidays. They assured me it was in hand and gave me the infection prevention policy dated August 1996. It was not marked "Draft" and, as I have already stated in this place, it was an appalling document - an appalling document that, it appears, senior management had not checked, the occupational health and safety committee had not seen, certainly people working in the houses were not aware of, and the union was not aware of. Apparently, Mrs Carnell had not read it last week either, when she referred to it as current policy. She would have been surprised to read in it that clients could be excluded from their homes by having a runny nose or high temperature. She would have been surprised also, I hope, to see no acknowledgment of employer responsibility in maintaining high standards of occupational health and safety. This is in clear contradiction to the spirit of the Occupational Health and Safety Act. She also, I hope, would have been concerned to see the contradictions regarding contaminated waste.

This policy was withdrawn and a new draft circulated, and for the first time staff are being properly consulted. From June of this year practice instructions manuals have been put into all houses and, while this is also a positive step, I am left with some very serious questions about management processes and policy formulation in Disability Services. I am also left with grave concerns about the apparent disregard this department has had for client and staff welfare in group houses in the past. The 50-odd pages that were tabled last week to represent past policy, of which the 1 August edition was apparently a revision, was a collection of various draft policies for hepatitis B and hepatitis A, some family planning documents and various other things. It does not indicate a particularly coordinated approach in the past to this aspect of accommodation for people with a disability.

Why did it take political pressure to get what should be basic and essential policies and procedures in place? I recognise that things are apparently improving, and I have been assured by senior management that things used to be much worse; but I still have to ask why political pressure was necessary to get these basic improvements. Why is Mrs Carnell still avoiding the question of how houses are assessed in terms of their needs, and why will she not identify which policy states the processes by which staff are to know how they are to purchase infection prevention materials? It was stated last week that it was referred to in the policy, but I certainly cannot find it. I would like to know where it is.

On 18 August I was assured that a minute was going out to group houses on this matter. It appears that it has gone to management, but most staff in the houses are not yet clear about the directions. The memo I read out yesterday in question time is certainly clear enough. The finance manager was obviously most unhappy about the amount of disinfectant being purchased and used. It is curious to think that staff should be chastised

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