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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4273 ..

Even if your writers had not been prepared to do the research, Minister, they could hardly be blind to the information that exists within the department. Consider the instructions on your own department of health website about "how to"in health promotion. Let me quote again. Under "Evaluation basics", it says:

Planning for evaluation is an essential part of the initial health promotion program planning process-

the initial part-

There are three different levels of evaluation which can be used to assess the effectiveness of a health promotion program:

process evaluation

impact evaluation

outcome evaluation

These must be done in a logical order-the short term effects of the health promotion program must be assessed before any long term benefits can be measured.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you will see that in the motion before the Assembly we have provided examples of the process, the impact and the outcome evaluations. However, we have emphasised outcomes because the most important aspect of any project is measuring the goals and the mile posts on the way to achieving improved outcomes.

We all want better health for our community. I presume that the minister has read his own website. I certainly presume that somebody within the department has read the website. Why, then, was the methodology that you preach not applied to your own plan? There are two possibilities. One possibility is that the Chief Minister has deliberately conveyed this notion to them so that his own government cannot be held accountable. That is the first possibility. However, this would hardly be consistent with his constant assertions that he places high value on his honesty and accountability.

The second possibility is that he simply believes that the department should do all the work and that he does not need to take responsibility to ensure that such a plan would really deliver outcomes on the lofty ideals that are portrayed. Whatever the possibilities, it is now time to move on. It is time to accept this motion and it is time to accept the constructive intention of improving the health outcomes of the ACT and the region.

Mr Deputy Speaker, there is another aspect of this plan that warrants discussion. The Chief Minister put his toe in the water on the issue of the social determinants of health in a discussion on pages 17 to 19. Once again, there are non-measurable strategies for achieving improvements in this area. Of course, we can all look at the unemployment figures as one of the key measures of the social determinants of health.

Actions on the social determinants of health are, of course, already under way. The previous government, my government, used the term social capital and deliberately framed a series of budgets around improving social capital-improving, if you like, the social determinants of health. However, even before the social capital budgets, we had

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