Page 1950 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2006
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I do not deny the premise that the ACT needs to correct its financial position, but benchmarking is not the only indicator of efficiency or desirability. It is worth noting that hospitals appear to be in trouble right round Australia. At the same time, we have a debt free federal government with a surplus of billions that it does not know what to do with. In regard to hospital waiting lists, I hope that the government will be prepared to respond to the public accounts committee’s inquiry into the Auditor-General’s report, because I think that it will come up with some useful information and advice.
The growing waiting list for dental services is a health disaster. Once upon a time, the federal government provided public health funds for dentistry. Now there are long waiting lists, limited services and growing imposts. Poor dental health has strong links to general health problems. It is not a cost saving for this government not to improve dentistry services for people who most need them.
This budget ignores the unmet demand for government-supported home births and midwife-led care, where women are more in control of the birthing experience and the costs to the system are much less than the medical-centred obstetrician approach. There are no new initiatives to support necessary changes to current maternity services.
We would have liked to have seen increased funding for the birth centre, which Ms Gallagher says works fine, as long as you register for the waiting list at five weeks of pregnancy. Midwives working at the birth centre should be paid and given equal conditions to midwives in the general maternity ward. There should also be a government-supported solution to the insurance impasse for independent midwives, and, generally, more funding put aside to implement the recommendations of A pregnant pause, which has been paused for far too long. There is nothing in this budget to indicate that such changes are on the way.
According to the 2004-05 national health survey, 14 per cent of ACT residents reported that they had a long-term mental or behavioural problem, compared with a national average of 11 per cent. The proportion of ACT residents experiencing high or very high levels of stress has increased from nine per cent in 2001 to 12 per cent in 2004-05, and females were much higher than men, at 15 per cent compared to nine per cent.
On 5 April the ACT government welcomed the federal government’s commitment to new funding for mental health in fulfilment of a COAG agreement to elevate mental health on the national health agenda. The Chief Minister also said that he would consider any ACT commitment in the context of the ACT budget, and now we have it. The ACT government’s new commitment to fighting mental health is $8 million, mainly directed towards clinical services and promoting community services that are not there.
So while our government goes on and on about how it spends 20 per cent more than other regions on government services, it has failed to give the attention deserved to this problem, which is so much worse than the national average. But it is not just a matter of dollars; it is also a matter of means. It is clear that we need to be doing more with our money when it comes to mental health and it is also clear that there are ways that we can do so. The recovery process occurs in the community, rather than within hospital walls; so innovative means are needed to assist those people at greater risk in keeping healthy.
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