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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4165 ..

The fact is that nothing was done until about a month ago. In fact, more than 200 beds already given by the Commonwealth over the last three years still have not been taken up. For those who may doubt the words of a Liberal such as I, let me quote Jim Purcell, the executive director of the Council on the Ageing. He said of yesterday’s report that it highlighted community concern about delays and that currently there were more than 200 approved beds not yet operational. Mr Purcell went on to say:

We don’t believe the majority of these beds will be operational for another two or three years.

I happen to agree with Mr Purcell: I do not believe that they will be operational for another two or three years.

It came as a surprise to me that we had the Chief Minister standing up in this place only an hour ago, possibly a little more, to talk about the wonderful things that this government has done in the provision of aged care. I noticed, however, that what he was saying fell into the category of something that we have become used to in the last three years, that is, simply promises: “We are going to provide this and we are going to provide that. Land will be made available here. We have given this amount of money to some other organisation.” We have yet to see bricks and mortar.

In a desperate attempt to defend his government’s inaction on aged care, the Chief Minister came out and said that the availability of land for aged care was greater than the provision of beds made by the Commonwealth. It was a remarkable statement: we have acres and acres—do we still call them acres these days or hectares?—of land available in the territory and all of it could be made available for aged care. The simple fact is that beds are not allocated on the basis of the availability of land. Something a little more definite than that is needed and this government has not provided it.

Over 200 beds have been approved but are not yet operational. A Commonwealth government in its right mind—even a Latham government, I would suggest, and I am being a bit extreme here—would be reluctant to hand over other beds if ones that exist at the moment and are available for ACT use have not yet been taken up. I have made the comment before that these beds are not in containers stacked on a dock somewhere in Sydney waiting to be shipped. The Chief Minister, however, continues to give ACT residents, the community, the wrong impression.

For example, on 27 July 2004, the Chief Minister began his “From the Chief’s Desk” column in the City Chronicle, in an article headed “Aged care beds a priority in the ACT”, with this amazing statement:

My government is acting quickly to respond to the allocation of aged care funding by the Commonwealth Government.

Acting quickly! It was 2½ years before any planning had got off the ground and he has had the temerity, the barefaced unmitigated gall, to claim that his government is acting quickly to respond to the allocation of aged care funding by the Commonwealth government. I did respond to that, and I thank the Chronicle for publishing my letter. I will not go into the detail, except to say that I pointed out that I believed that the Chief Minister had introduced a degree of exaggeration in what he said on the provision

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