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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 4614 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

It is much the same as the response in 2002. I think I will have to finish. I can see I am running out of time. Basically, I think I have made the point fairly clearly that we know there is a broad strategic direction this government is going in, but we are not really seeing actions, time lines and targets that we can hold government accountable to. I think it is quite a disappointing performance.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (4.04): Mr Deputy Speaker, as the Chief Minister has said, the territory's population of people over 65 is expected to triple between 1998 and 2051 and services for older Canberrans will be essential to respond to these dramatically changing demographics.

Responsibility for aged care services in the ACT is shared across Commonwealth and ACT government agencies. The Commonwealth is responsible for the crucial area of residential aged-cared services while home and community care services, HACC services, are a shared responsibility between the ACT and Commonwealth governments.

Mr Speaker, in the time available to me to address this matter of public importance I would like to rebut some of the unsubstantiated arguments that other members have made, and to outline what steps the government is taking. Firstly, I look at the issue of residential aged care. This is an area of shared responsibility. In particular, there are significant access issues associated with residential aged-care beds in the ACT.

There are a significant number of people waiting in the community who require permanent, high or low-level care in a residential facility. Contrary to the assertions made by Mr Cornwell, it is not simply a case of the Commonwealth's funding being allocated and that is the end of it. There is widespread recognition that the Commonwealth's formula, which determines the level of beds allocated, is insufficient to meet demand in the ACT and, indeed, is insufficient to meet demand right across the country.

Because of this there is a significant number of people waiting in hospitals for nursing home placement. Many people are getting care that is not appropriate for their needs and have a reduced quality of life. There are the obvious operational and budgetary issues that Mr Cornwell highlighted in his comments.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the ACT has 635 operational high-care places, 910 operational low-care places and 362 operational community aged-care packages. The total number of operational places is 1,907. The ACT government is working in a number of ways to improve access to residential aged care for Canberrans. One issue that has been raised is the perception of delays in aged-care beds becoming available due to planning and land grant processes.

Mr Cornwell asked in his comments: where are the incentives for aged-care residential development? In reality, even the briefest perusal of existing policy schemes would have revealed that currently the ACT government provides a 50 per cent concession on land value for land granted for aged-care facilities.

The policy introduced by the previous government when it moved away from the peppercorn rental arrangements that had been in place before then-the policy

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