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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 3592 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Gwen Gray of the Australian National University, in an article in the Canberra Times in 1996, pointed out how the community health centres were valuable points of service of all kinds of health care-preventative, team work between GPs and other allied health professionals-and would be essential following deinstitutionalisation of mental illness care.

I heard from two social workers who at the time were caught up in the Carnell government's backdoor removal of the social worker positions from the Melba health centre via a series of three-month contracts and relocation to Belconnen. I read from their letter of December 1995:

The Belconnen community can ill afford the loss of this service altogether and already other related services are experiencing increased work demands. From our working relationship with the Community Mental Health Team we are aware of the increasing demand on their service which has coincided with the reduction of both the Belconnen and Melba Community Division Social Work positions from full to part time. There have also been reductions in staff available for direct service delivery in the Community Mental Health Teams. Alongside this is increased demand with the servicing of Gungahlin residents.

Sure enough, according to Ms Urbanc, reported in the Canberra Schizophrenia Fellowship newsletter last month:

[ACT Mental Health Services has been] pushing for shared care with GPs for the past four years, and it was cause for serious concern among carers, clients and mental health providers that few doctors were now willing to bulk bill. The Mental Health Services were working towards an arrangement whereby groups of GPs would be contracted to provide health care to clients on a bulk billing basis.

The AMA have traditionally resisted the model of salaried officers and raised with my office the view that any subsidy to bulk-billing doctors could be unfair competition in the small business model. But we need to consider the broader public interest, particularly in times when there are not enough doctors and when the aim is to service people who may otherwise go without care. How much can it be disadvantaging most GPs?

The Single Mothers Alliance wrote to me in April, also hoping that the ACT government would intervene to stop the Interchange General Practice closing. We need action and creative strategies from our territory government when we are being failed by the federal government.

Such a program would meet key policy directions of this government. The Reid report calls for emphasis on multi-disciplinary approaches. One of ACT Community Care's five core processes listed in their 2002-04 Corporate Plan is building strategic relationships with other service providers, including non-government organisations, other government agencies and the private sector, because they are essential to the provision of effective and integrated community-based services. This includes horizontal integration across primary care, along with balanced vertical integration with the tertiary sector.

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