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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2469 ..

for those aged care nursing home type patients in our hospitals.” That is the proposition Mr Smyth is putting on the table today. What a completely unreasonable position to come from a man who suggests that he wants to be the Minister for Health in the ACT. He is going to say, “I don’t care about those nursing home type patients; I don’t care about access block in our hospitals; I don’t care about waiting times in our emergency department. I am just going to say all of those things are unacceptable.”

Mrs Dunne: Point of order, Mr Speaker.

MR CORBELL: Mrs Dunne, Mr Smyth has had his turn. You sit down and let me have mine. Mr Speaker, that is the proposition.

Mrs Dunne: Mr Corbell is continually misrepresenting the Leader of the Opposition—

MR CORBELL: There is no point of order, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: It is not a point of order; it is a point for debate.

MR CORBELL: That is the proposition that Mr Smyth is putting to this Assembly. He professes to have concerns about waiting times in our emergency departments, but, when it comes to the crunch, when it comes to the hard decision to put in place some systemic reform to address that, what does he do? He seeks to block it in this place. He professes to have concerns about bed block in our hospitals, but, when it comes to the crunch, when it comes to making the hard decisions about how to address those issues, what does he do? He fudges it and seeks to block it.

When it comes to the crunch—to try to address the level of care and appropriate level of care for nursing home type patients in our hospitals—what does he do? He fudges it. He seeks to block it. That is the proposition that Mr Smyth is putting on the table today. If this motion is successful, he and this Assembly will deny 40 aged care-type patients the opportunity to have transitional care in our hospitals—a level of care suitable for them and paid for by the Commonwealth government.

Let us put a few facts very clearly on the table. RILU was established in 1996 and partially funded through an NRMA grant. The service provided at RILU by the medical nursing and allied health staff is delivered in a homelike environment but in all other respects is identical to the type of care provided in Ward 12B. Many patients over the years have benefited from the excellent care and expertise provided by the dedicated staff of the rehabilitation service. No-one is questioning their capacity or their experience and skill.

The RILU model was developed in response to a need identified over 10 years ago specifically for road trauma cases—that is why the NRMA Road Safety Trust funded it—but over the past four to five years the service has changed. It has evolved from its original purpose to be more of a general rehabilitation service as we see today. This current model of service does not exist in many other settings, with the preferred models being for community or home based care as the patient moves on from an acute rehabilitation setting. In addition, over the past decade many other changes have occurred in both the inpatient and community settings that impact on the identified role of RILU and make it timely to reconsider the efficiency of its current operations.

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