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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 5 Hansard (4 May) . . Page.. 1313 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

disabilities and older Canberrans. It will also enable essential reforms and improvements to both hospital and community services as the focus of health care in the ACT increasingly shifts from acute care to primary intervention and support.

To ensure that waiting times for Canberrans needing urgent elective surgery are improved, the Government has decided to allocate an additional $3m to purchase many more surgical procedures. To be in place for the next two years, this initiative represents a doubling of funding to $6m per annum for the waiting list reduction program that was first established by this Government. Day surgery facilities at the Canberra Hospital will also be expanded from eight to 12 beds to enable greater throughput for these procedures. As part of the plan by the hospital's management to improve its efficiency and contain costs, this budget also provides funding for targeted voluntary redundancies. In total, the hospital is expected to realise savings of approximately $12m in 1999-2000 through this measure and other efficiency measures.

Mr Speaker, funding for the home and community care program will be increased by a further $1m, which will allow many more services to be provided to older Canberrans, people with disabilities and carers. In 1999-2000 a record $12m will be spent under this joint Commonwealth-ACT program. If there is one area of community care which receives less public attention than it deserves it is surely disability services. Despite this fact, over the past four years this Government has boosted funding for disability services by 30 per cent. I am pleased to advise that in this budget we will provide a further $1m for disability support services in recognition of the level of unmet need. That is an increase of 5.8 per cent in ACT funding, more than double the CPI.

The Government has also made good on its promise to establish a hepatitis C financial assistance scheme at a cost of $4.5m. As well, funding of $300,000 has been made available to establish a new integrated diabetes management service in the ACT. Finally, the Government has decided to transfer allied health services from the control of the Canberra Hospital to ACT Community Care, in line with our aim of strengthening the primary health care sector.

The Government will release a new, integrated ACT drug strategy later this year that will outline the direction we intend to take in combating the problems caused by illicit drug use in our community. The strategy will be based upon three distinct but interrelated approaches - law enforcement, education and treatment. In advance of this strategy, this budget includes new funding initiatives totalling more than $500,000 which are aimed at boosting our response to these problems. The Government will contribute $250,000 a year for each of the next four years to help establish the ACT's first residential drug treatment program for teenagers. Extra funds totalling $100,000 will be made available to provide up to 100 additional places in the methadone treatment program. Another $115,000 will be directed towards strengthening drug education programs in government schools.

Mr Speaker, just as this Government's provision of increased community and health services underpins our notion of a caring society, our efforts to maintain the best education system in Australia must be seen as integral to our goal of a clever community. In this budget, like the four that have preceded it, funding for government schooling has been maintained in real terms at an additional cost of $5.2m in 1999-2000. A total

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