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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2027 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

In addition, 94 per cent rated the program as being highly valuable and 88 per cent noted that improvements had taken place over recent times. Over 70 per cent of participants confirmed that the disability program delivers a quality accommodation service. I think that is an outcome that those people in our disability program, who are running our disability program and working in it, should be very proud of.

Ms Reilly indicated that she felt that the brochures we were currently using were somehow unnecessary. I would have to say that I disagree with her very strongly. I think those results of the customer satisfaction focus group show that very well. We believed that there was a huge need, in the disability area, to have significantly better communication between the department, disability services, the carers, the guardians, the people who work in the service and the people who live in our accommodation. Mr Speaker, to have better communication, you have to have better vehicles for communication. Part of that has been the new approach we have taken with newsletters, with policy documents, with an approach, I think, that shows the people who work in and use our service how important we perceive that service to be. Similarly with mental health, we are spending record amounts of money, Mr Speaker, and, I think, getting significantly better outcomes already. But those outcomes, I believe, will improve significantly over the years to come, based upon the plans and the reforms put in place over the last 12 months.

This coming year we will see the first cardio-thoracic surgery in the ACT - something that has been promised since self-government, Mr Speaker, but never produced by those opposite. This last year saw the establishment of an adolescent unit - something promised by the previous Government year after year and never delivered, but delivered by us this year. We have seen the expansion of our postnatal care services. We will see the opening of the new QEII family centre next month - something we promised last time.

We have seen a huge increase in Healthpact funding. One of those things that the Estimates Committee has recommended over a number of years is that Healthpact, or the Health Promotion Fund, should have its funding increased, I think, to 5 per cent - a recommendation ignored every year by the previous Government but taken up by this Government. I think Healthpact is operating very efficiently, Mr Speaker. In the last year we have seen extra money spent in such areas as hepatitis C management - something, again, that I am sure people in this house would support. In other words, Mr Speaker, in ACT Health at the moment we are treating more patients and the cost of treating a patient is coming down. That is in line with the promises we made in terms of reducing the cost of treating a patient.

Those reductions in costs will amount to about $27m over the three years of this Government. But, most importantly, Mr Speaker, we have managed to reduce waiting lists quite significantly. In fact, waiting lists have now been reduced by some 760, or 17 per cent, since we came to government. Mr Speaker, I think that compares very favourably with the situation under the previous Government, where waiting lists more than doubled. They blew out every health budget. We have managed to achieve at least one out of two health budgets; to reduce waiting lists - up to now anyway - by some 17 per cent and to increase the number of patients that we treat in our hospital system;

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