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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 2956 ..

government. It is quite interesting in relation to the suite of issues that we confronted in the health portfolio—

MR SPEAKER: Come to the health portfolio, please.

MR STANHOPE: That was the health portfolio three years ago. It is historically important because of what we inherited.

Mr Smyth: The Chief Minister says that I do not know what I am doing, but if he looks at line 1.15 he will see that there is now a department of disability and housing and that is where we will appropriately discuss the Gallop report.

MR SPEAKER: I have already raised the point of order.

MR STANHOPE: I was raising the point about what we inherited in the health portfolio on the change of government. One of the things we inherited in health at the change of government was disability services. We were left with the Gallop report to implement. I think everybody in Canberra knows of the total disarray in disability services.

We know at the time of the change of government 2½ or two and two-thirds years ago the situation we inherited with the nurses. These were issues that were not touched on. Let us go through them: there were dramatic issues with nurses and the EBA in that the previous government had not appropriated any funds for a nurses pay rise, there was no provision in the outyears for a pay rise for nurses; disability services were in complete and total disarray—we need to remember this; we need to remember the history and we need to remember what we inherited—and mental health was in disarray, with the lowest level of per capita expenditure on mental health of any jurisdiction in Australia. These are the things that we inherited just over 2½ years ago.

We can go on. And it is worth repeating them: nurses pay rises in negotiation, an offer that had been made that had not been funded; disability services in complete and total disarray; the lowest rate of per capita funding for mental health services in Australia—the lowest rate for mental health funding of any jurisdiction in Australia. That is absolutely, completely and totally disgraceful.

I heard in the debate just now a comment that we had not rectified the problems that have been identified in the psychiatric services unit. Who built the psychiatric services unit? Who bequeathed it to us as a government? Here we have the gross hypocrisy that we have not yet remedied the problems of the psychiatric services unit, constructed and developed by the Liberal Party. It was their management; it was their design; it was their construction. We inherited it. Now they stand here and criticise us because it is another Liberal Party mess that we have not yet been able to clean up in the two and two-thirds years we have been in government.

Let us just go through them item by item: nurses pay rises not funded; disability services through the Gallop inquiry in total disarray, a complete mess; the lowest level of funding per capita in Australia for mental health; the psychiatric services unit, which they stand here now and criticise us for not rectifying, is their legacy to the people of the ACT; respite care is almost invisible on the radar, no funding for respite care; and the lowest level of GPs per capita in the nation once again.

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