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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Tuesday, 9 March 2004) . . Page.. 905 ..

This Stanhope government seems to be mesmerised by bills of rights and gay adoption. Unfortunately, that indicates its inability to do anything practical about fundamental issues such as aged care waiting lists, blocked and onerous planning systems, nursing home staff shortages, transitional care bed shortages, elder abuse, powers of attorney and a raft of other problems affecting our older population and their carers.

Let us start with planning. Last week in this Assembly Mr Corbell tabled a list of aged care development proposals, development applications and land grants that had been before this Stanhope government or that the government had been aware of since January 2002.

In contrast, in an answer to a media release dated 21 July 2003, which was triggered as a result of a question placed on notice No. 733, Mr Corbell stated that at least 20 new developments had been raised with government agencies and that the Stanhope government was keen to see these proposals facilitated.

Mysteriously, 11 of these developments included in that press release last July do not appear in the current list tabled last week by Mr Corbell. More than half the proposals have disappeared. They represent more than 250 beds or units. Where have the districts of Isaacs, Chapman, Fisher, Conder, Kaleen, Bruce and Aranda gone? They have disappeared.

What has happened to them? What has happened to these aged care developments? Why do they now not appear on the list? Perhaps I can speculate, Mr Speaker. The government itself had said that no applications for aged care developments or the sale of land had been rejected by the government since January 2002. So what caused these 11 developments to drop off the list?

Obviously they did exist at some stage because I have the evidence here. Therefore, what caused the developers perhaps to be discouraged? Could it be the onerous planning process that this planning minister has failed to address? Could it be the change of use charges that this government has failed to examine: the $20,000 and $30,000 that it wants per unit for a change of use?

Could the major delays in the planning system have discouraged developers of aged care facilities? Could it be that these developers have spent so much time and money trying to go through the hurdles of the planning system that their proposal is no longer financially viable?

The government has done nothing to address the planning system, reduce these delays and improve the chances of any developments going ahead. So we have lost 11 valuable proposals since July last year. Yet only recently—in fact in an article in The Canberra Times last Saturday—the Council on the Ageing stated:

We need 75 beds every year from now on to assist and to accommodate our elderly citizens.

I now look specifically at some of the still outstanding. The Little Company of Mary are desperately trying to get built a hundred bed facility at Bruce. In Mr Corbell’s paper of

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