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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 1825 ..

Mr Berry: It was given to them.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Berry is still complaining about it. He is still whingeing about it, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Mr Berry is interjecting and talking about giving it away. I will give him away very shortly if he is not careful.

MRS CARNELL: That sounds good. Mr Speaker, the new owners did face a daunting task in bringing the facility up to one that had an acceptable level of care. A Commonwealth monitoring team visited the home in February this year, 11 months after JVS took over, and they went through a full inspection and report. What did they find? Within the last 12 months, the care and treatment of residents has improved out of sight. In fact, the nursing home now meets 29 of the 31 Commonwealth standards. Remember that it was two of 31 under Mr Berry and those opposite. After this Government stepped in and took decisive action - - -

Mr Berry: You gave it away.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Berry says we gave it away. What we did was change it from two of 31 to 29 of 31 in just 11 months. Among the improvements noted by the team were better meals, more activities, more attention to the needs of each resident, better decor and surroundings, and a good knowledge of policies and procedures being displayed by the staff. I am also advised that Johnson Village Services has now informed the department that it expects to comply with all 31 standards within the next few months. I think that the report released by the monitoring team should be required reading for everybody who participated in the debate about Jindalee's future. For that reason, Mr Speaker, I would like to table the report, for the interest of members.

I also want to remind members of a comment made by the Assembly's self-appointed expert, shall we say, on probably everything - business, law, budgets, waiting lists, the environment and patient numbers - and now the self-appointed expert on nursing homes. On 22 August 1995 Mr Berry told the Assembly:

We have a situation ... where Jindalee Nursing Home is going to be attacked with blind rhetoric, in this Kennett-like move. Mrs Carnell has a clear message for the people of the ACT - "Go and get Jeffed". There is no clearer message than, "Go and get Jeffed; we are blinded by our own rhetoric, and we are locked into all of these ridiculous ideological privatisation outcomes".

Mr Speaker, I think what we see from that is very self-explanatory. Mr Berry could not come to grips with the problem. They met two out of 31 standards. We now meet 29 out of 31. We will meet 31 out of 31. If meeting 29 out of 31 standards is a ridiculous ideological privatisation outcome, Mr Speaker, I will support privatisation outcomes every day.

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