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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2857 ..

So it is necessary to have better centres and liaison officers to assist them in that process and to look after them. I am disappointed the government has not found the resources to reinforce some of these communities. I speak for example of the Mandir Society, the Indian Hindu society that would very much like to build an aged care centre. It has a lot of funding and does not need too much more in the way of funding backup, but it needs government assistance. It needs a leg up in the identification of land and other services. So far there has been a thundering silence in reply to the approaches that it has made. I exhort the government to have a look at that society and some other communities as well which have some resources. I am reminded of the Chinese retirement village in Kaleen, another example of a project a community would like to take on board. It has some funding, but a little leg up from the government would go a long way to realising its visions.

If I could also talk about a major concern in the multicultural arena, very poorly managed by the Chief Minister. We do not see the Chief Minister, or any other minister, regularly attending multicultural activities and functions. We do not see the leadership being exercised in multicultural activities that we think the government has a responsibility to exercise. Instead, the Chief Minister is utilising the multicultural component of CMD as an excuse to run silly, divisive political speeches. So, rather than positive speeches being made by the Chief Minister to the multicultural community to better explain how this funding is going to be spent to realise visions in the multicultural arena, or speaking more positively to encourage harmony in the multicultural community, we see divisive speeches which often degrade our own nation and—I do not know whether the Chief Minister realises this—cause divisions within the multicultural community. Again, we encourage the Chief Minister to step back from that practice and pay a lot more attention to that sub portfolio. Let us see some leadership being exercised and the encouragement of harmony across the multicultural community instead of the divisive behaviour being demonstrated by the Chief Minister.

MR CORNWELL (11.47): I want to touch on three areas of the Chief Minister’s portfolio. Obviously the first is aged care. My colleague Mr Pratt has highlighted the concerns and the requirements of the ethnic groups in the community seeking aged care. It is necessary that we remember that this is a changing society. For many years people of various ethnicities would look after their parents at home. That was the accepted thing to do. This is changing. It is part of the integration in the Australian community to some extent. It is certainly changing societal needs and expectations and it must be addressed.

As Mr Pratt has said, a number of ethnic organisations are looking for assistance. Of course they are not alone, because the entire aged network here in Canberra is looking for assistance. It is looking for assistance in a very practical sense of nursing home beds and aged care facilities. This side of the house has debated this ad nauseam in this chamber. All I can say is if the words that have been expressed about the need for aged care facilities were individual bricks, we would have something about the size of the Empire State Building, or perhaps even the Pentagon. Unfortunately, we still have only promises.

With four months to go before an election, we may see some activity in the interim, but it is far too late. The crisis, and I use that word advisedly, is upon us. It will only get worse as time goes by and it is being caused in large part by this government’s failure to

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