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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4604 ..

MR CORNWELL (continuing):

Three months on nothing has altered. This Labor government is still in a situation where they are promising facilities will be provided to our aged, and the problem of course only gets worse because we have a predicted future increase in our aged population, as it is everywhere else, but there is no attempt to address the problem.

There have been some attempts in the past to blame the Commonwealth. Let me make it quite clear that there is no responsibility on the Commonwealth for the problems that we are facing here in the provision of aged-care facilities, because the provision of the beds is a Commonwealth responsibility and these have been provided.

The responsibility of the ACT government, however, is the shelters to house them, and they have not been provided. The ACT, I understand, has some of the longest waiting lists in the country for beds in aged care. In July this year the Morshead Home in Lyneham, Mr Speaker, said they had a waiting list of 540 but only places for 80. Villaggio Sant' Antonio over in Belconnen have closed their waiting list after more than 500 requests, and Goodwin Aged Care had waiting lists as high as 600 over three facilities.

Even if we allow for duplication of some of these people, these desperate people on the waiting lists, the fact is that there are clearly several thousand elderly people seeking accommodation here in the ACT. Whilst we rely on the Commonwealth for funding of these places, there is no excuse for us failing to get our side of the deal sorted out.

But where are the beds, Mr Corbell? Even after my motion in August-and I repeat August-was debated, highlighting the importance, not a brick has been laid. Indeed, let us revisit the minister's press release of 21 July which stated that proposals by the private and non-government sector for "over 500 independent living units and 300 aged care beds across Canberra"had been received.

You, Minister, said the land development agent, ACT Planning and Land Authority, were aware of these proposals-that is useful-and you tabled a long list of them in your press release. However, in answer to a question without notice in the Assembly last week you confirmed that these aged-care facilities were not necessarily formal development applications; they were a mixture of formal applications and proposals.

You went on to say that there were in fact 145 beds that actually had funding provided for by the Commonwealth-103 high care, 42 low care. My question now, Minister, is: how many of these beds could be filled by people still in hospital, in acute hospital beds?

As we know, it costs between $555 and $968 per day to keep a nursing home patient in an acute hospital bed, whereas in residential aged care it costs between $25 and $90 a day. So it is costing the taxpayer up to $878 a day to keep these people in a hospital bed, when funding for nursing home beds, 145 of them, already has been provided.

The waste of ACT taxpayers' money over 12 months must run into millions-I think I calculated it at about 12 million and that was conservative-not to mention of course the burden that this is placing on ACT hospital acute beds, which we all know is a matter of constant concern to this Assembly and to the people of Canberra.

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