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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2308 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

What about disability services for children? In this budget, there is extra funding of $250,000 to support children with autism spectrum disorder, cerebral palsy and so on. What did those opposite do in the area? There was not one school unit for autism when those opposite were in government, not one. They did not do anything.

The fact is that since coming to government we have addressed that issue and continue to put money into it. Yes, Ms Tucker and others, we are not there yet. We have not addressed every single issue. But we have addressed disability services every year. Every year we have got better with disabilities services. The amount of money that we put in per head of population is significantly higher than that for New South Wales, Victoria or other parts of Australia. What more can we do? Yes, we can aim at being perfect and we will continue to aim for that, but let us not have a line of a budget knocked off simply because we have not pursued every single unmet need in this budget.

Let us look at mental health. Again, every year we have put in new money, even when we were pushing down expenditure and had really serious financial problems. More money has gone into mental health, not into some areas of government, I have to say. In fact, the Chief Minister's Department ended up with a reduction of over 20 per cent in its budget and there were reductions in other areas, too, but more money went into disability services and mental health because they matter to us.

Mr Moore: And overall in health.

MS CARNELL: As Mr Moore says, more money went into health in total every single year. In this budget, there is $636,000 for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and it is this budget that we are talking about. What about supported accommodation for clients with dual diagnosis? There is $200,000.

Mr Moore: Mr Stanhope gave us credit for that.

MS CARNELL: I accept that. If you add those two things together, you get $836,000-more money than for the supervised injecting place-going to people with mental health problems who need help. Obviously, the support for the YMCA redevelopment project that will establish a Ronald McDonald House in the ACT is significant in dollar terms, but it will support parents who have kids with cancer, mental health problems and other serious health problems that require them to be in hospital for long periods. Remember the day Millie Hagan died. I am sure that we were all extraordinarily sad about that, but the fact is that we desperately need support for parents whose kids have serious conditions; the need is very real.

There is more money for the methadone program, more money for diabetes care, more money for indigenous health, more money for the domiciliary oxygen scheme and more money for the provision of a breast prosthesis for women who have had mastectomies, something that was lobbied for significantly, not just with us but over a number of years. Those opposite ignored it. The moment we had the money, we said yes.

I am not suggesting that our handling of health is perfect, but I do know that we are doing a damn sight better at it than most governments round Australia. I think that 100 per cent of our public hospital beds are now accredited. Is that right?

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