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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Tuesday, 3 August 2004) . . Page.. 3357 ..

test, that we will win the endorsement of the community. I believe this because our record over the past three years is a proud one. Consider some of the highlights.”

I looked for the highlights on aged care. I knew that there would be some there because they are proud of all their achievements. Guess what? Aged care does not figure as one of the highlights of this Chief Minister’s first term in office. Many things happened immediately upon their coming to office.

Mr Quinlan: Just too many.

MR SMYTH: “Just too many” interjects the Treasurer. Just too many people out there are saying that you have not done enough and what you have done you have done too slowly and, in the main, has been irrelevant. But I thought that it would be in the speech. This is such an important issue. They cannot trivialise it by putting it in the press release; it will be in the Chief Minister’s speech. After all, the Chief Minister is committed to Canberra!

I looked at the speech. I went through page 1 and saw nothing about aged care. I got to page 2. Again, here are some of the highlights of the last three years. But again, aged care did not rate. I went through the speech and saw a lot of rhetoric: there was talk about lights on the hill. Watson, Fisher, Scullin, Chifley and Curtin all got a mention, but aged care did not.

Apparently Ben Chifley knew about leadership, because he gets a guernsey. We talk about the light on the hill, but the light is not shining for aged care under this lot. When you get to the detail stage you see: “Delegates, we will have much to say over the next 11 weeks about the detail of our second term agenda. The first test is to articulate our record.” I thought: I must be getting close to aged care now; I must be getting close.

We looked in health. Health and aged care go together—the Chief Minister mentioned that. But clearly there is no mention of aged care in health. I thought there may be something in education—keeping them in the workforce, university of the third age—but it was not mentioned under education. There is a lot of talk about keeping older Canberrans in the workforce, so when we got to the industrial relations section I thought that there may be something there. But there was nothing about aged care there, nothing under justice and law reform, nothing under economic management, nothing under sustainability and nothing under bushfire recovery.

We then get to the section about planning for the future. I thought for sure that there would be something under planning for the future, given that we are “acting quickly and determined to stay ahead of the game”. I thought that aged care would be mentioned there. But alas, aged care does not get a guernsey in the section about planning for the future.

Clearly one of the highlights of the first term of the Stanhope government is its failure to act on aged care; it does not rate a mention. It is not part of the planning for the future. Certainly we have not had action to show that this government is committed to delivering those beds that are available now—which have in some cases been available for up to three years—or that there is enough forward planning going ahead to accommodate not just the 505 beds coming in the next three years but also the beds that

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