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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Tuesday, 9 March 2004) . . Page.. 916 ..

ageing population. One of the most salutary experiences I had recently was at a shopping centre, I think just before Christmas. I was talking to an elderly lady who was selling her house in Macquarie and moving to Western Australia because there was no affordable aged care accommodation for her. She had a choice. She did not have much family in Canberra, she had some family in Sydney and she had some family in Perth. What it boiled down to was that she could not find accommodation in the ACT that she could afford. As she said to me, what she could afford “you couldn’t swing a cat in” and as a result of this she was moving to Western Australia where there was much more provision for aged care and where the facilities available for independent living for people as they got older who wanted to downscale their gardens and whatnot were much better than they were in the ACT. It is a damning indictment of the ACT when people who have lived all their life here get to their retirement age and move. In the old days, when people retired they moved to the coast for the sun and whatnot. People in Canberra now tend not to do that. They would like to stay here but are now being forced to move because there is nowhere for them to live. This is a terrible indictment of this government.

Going back to the issue of residential care: I just cannot believe that Mr Corbell can come in here and, without a blush, talk about what he has done for the Little Company of Mary and for Southern Cross Homes. It just beggars belief that this minister can say that the government has done everything possible, when these two organisations still do not have leases and are still being confronted with a range of planning problems. Yes, there are rules under the Land Act that we need to ensure that they comply with, but it is being done at such a slow pace. Someone who is involved in the aged care industry said to me in the last fortnight, “If only we had those Calvary beds, the difference it would make to people, not just in Belconnen but across Canberra, would be just unbelievable.” The community are hanging out for those beds and this government is doing nothing to facilitate that happening. It seems that at every twist and every turn there is another means of confounding. Again today the minister talked about the St Andrew’s home and their proposal to develop land adjacent to them. This has been on the agenda for some time, probably since before the last election; I recall it coming to my attention very shortly before the last election—and what do we find today? There is a further planning study to work out whether a tiny weeny little bit of land that is set aside for urban open space should perhaps be put to better use.

I think it is time the government just got on and did the variation to the territory plan. I am sure that the planning and environment committee would facilitate that draft variation to the territory plan. I put the challenge to the minister: if he does the variation, if it is within the power of my committee to approve it we will approve it as quickly as possible, so that St Andrew’s can get that tiny little bit of land that they have been asking for since, to my knowledge, 2001.

This is happening all over the place. The community in the ACT are constantly identifying places that would benefit from aged care accommodation. The members of the Belconnen Community Council in my electorate have been very active on this issue and I commend them for it. They have constantly championed the building of aged care accommodation. They are also critical of this government and the previous government for some of their land selections, and I think their criticisms need to be investigated. They are constantly putting forward suggestions to the government, but they seem to be falling on deaf ears. My ears are not deaf to their calls and, as a result of this, I am

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