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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2333 ..

MR SMYTH

The aged care places that the territory has should be of concern to all of us, particularly as they are hard to come by. If you do not use them quickly and you do not keep to your undertaking under the contracts, you can run the risk of losing them. It would seem that very little progress has been made with the aged care facility on the other side of Haydon Drive, opposite Calvary Hospital.

One of the recommendations of the committee was that this matter be expedited with all urgency. I think we all agree that that should the case. There are some difficulties with planning in terms of some trees and, I think, access to and egress from the site. I would simply urge the minister to make sure that we get that site happening as quickly as we can, because I think that we would all agree that we need to be going after the Commonwealth for more and more aged care facilities and places as best we can.

I turn to a couple of other issues that were not addressed in this budget. I refer particularly to the aged care liaison workers that were promised, the dual diagnosis workers for the indigenous community that were also promised and the additional breast cancer nurse. I understand that there is provision for one in the budget. The government had promised to provide for two in its first year in government. We are yet to see the second breast cancer nurse and we are yet to see the aged care liaison workers or the indigenous community workers. I think that that is a shame. These are areas of great need. Indeed, these are, hopefully, areas of prevention so that we can make sure that we take the burden off the hospital system by keeping people in place and fit for as long as we can.

Among the other issues that I think we need to take into account in relation to the health portfolio-I am sure that Mrs Burke will comment on them quickly-is the amount of notification that is given to community groups that their grants are to be stopped, halted or amended. We heard in discussing the budget for Chief Minister's about the terrible state that Volunteering ACT have been put in and the terrible way that they have been treated. Apparently, the hepatitis C group has also had their funding stopped or reduced. Mrs Burke will canvass that as well.

Mr Deputy Speaker, if the former Under Treasurer was right when he told me that the hospital was your eyes on the budget and you need to watch the funding of the hospital because it is an indicator of where you are going in the future, the people of Canberra should be very scared by this budget. The health component is not sustainable. The figures for health indicate a huge lack of regard for what will be coming in the outyears when we all know, as I have said previously, of the burdens facing the ACT.

We are faced with a budget that is not sustainable and will eat rather significantly into any surpluses that Mr Quinlan is able to create through other means. I suspect that much, if not all, of it will be sucked into the health system. Health is something that deserves all the funding that we can give it, but the government is going into denial and saying that the figures in the budget are sustainable and it is going into denial and saying that the health system is getting better. It needs only to talk to the people on the growing waiting list and needs only to talk to the people who are asking the questions as to why we are spending more money in health when we are getting fewer services.

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