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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Tuesday, 3 August 2004) . . Page.. 3352 ..

a working group with representatives from the same broad areas to develop options for the government’s consideration. I look forward to considering a broad range of strategies and initiatives once they have been finalised by the working group.

The government has also been proactive in relation to concessions to seniors. In addition to the $20 million that it provided last financial year for concessions to support essential services for low-income earners, including pensioners, in this year’s budget it has allocated a further $5 million to assist pensioners and low-income earners with their water and sewerage payments and energy bills, including new assistance for gas charges.

With regard to the proposal to introduce a national reciprocal transport concessions regime, I am pleased to say that the ACT government is currently in close negotiations with the Commonwealth government, other states and the Northern Territory to bring that matter to fruition. I note that yesterday the Liberal Party promised to do something that essentially has already been concluded by this government.

Notwithstanding the fact that the Commonwealth government has been dragging its feet in relation to this matter, the states and territories have been persistent in keeping the initiative on the national agenda. We are hopeful that the Commonwealth will eventually come to the party in relation to reciprocal transport concessions. I recently agreed to senior officials in my department taking part in a national working group to bring that matter to a conclusion. I look forward to the Commonwealth accepting the importance of that initiative.

This government has also been proactive in its prevention of elder abuse. It is now acknowledged by experts in the area of ageing and elder abuse that the ACT leads Australia in those areas. In September 2002 the government tabled its response to report 11 of the former Standing Committee on Health and Community Care entitled “Elder Abuse in the ACT”, and it agreed to fully implement all its recommendations. I point out that although the Assembly provided its report on elder abuse to the former government, that government did nothing. My government has implemented, or it is in the process of making significant progress in the implementation of, all the recommendations in that report.

In the 2003-04 budget this government allocated $4.5 million to enhance all areas of respite care and it provided a further $411,000 to support the implementation of an elder abuse prevention information and referral service. During the 2003-04 financial year the government also accomplished the following. It established the elder abuse prevention information telephone hotline, which was complemented by a website dedicated to elder abuse prevention information; it printed brochures in 15 languages; and it established a database for recording non-identifying statistics.

The government engaged a permanent officer to undertake elder abuse prevention training and information for professionals and interested community groups; it established Betty Searle House, a boarding house providing long-term accommodation for older women, including those women who are victims of elder abuse; and it produced a comprehensive training resource kit for home and community care service providers. The government also conducted a series of protocol development workshops relating to elder abuse issues involving 127 people representing 58 government and non-government agencies, and it commenced the review of the Powers of Attorney Act.

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