Page 1593 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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I would like to commend to the minister an article published by the Centre for Policy Development, entitled “A New Approach to Primary Care for Australia”. The author, Jennifer Doggett, proposes that integrated primary healthcare centres are the solution to delivering a cost-efficient universal health system. Her one-stop-shop model for accessing a range of primary care services within the community is not a new idea. The arguments are mounting, though, for this sort of approach to delivering health care, moving away from institutionalised delivery of health care, to easily accessible, linked-up services in our local communities.
Interestingly, Ms Doggett argues that the cost of rolling out enough integrated primary health care centres to service the entire population of Australia would be around $4 billion dollars over 10 years. That is around the same amount that the Howard government hands over in just one year to prop up the private health insurance industry. Without real, courageous reforms to our health system, we will just keep seeing more and more funding going into more and more expensive services to achieve less and less.
I refer to vulnerable people and social policy. In terms of housing, I was looking for a budget that built on the many good ideas put forward by the government in its affordable housing plan. This budget should have tackled housing security by increasing funding for public housing, for transitional housing, and allocating more resources to those providing services to the homeless and more resources for community housing providers. Why does not, for instance, the government commit to a more equitable formula for calculating land tax, which would take account of actual property values, and encourage rental investment in the lower end of the private rental market?
Along with ACTCOSS, we encouraged the government to adopt inclusionary zoning to supplement the availability of affordable housing. We have been critical of the government’s abandonment of security of tenure for public housing, and we hoped that this budget would have a strong emphasis on social policy to counteract the changes to public housing and ameliorate the effects of the last budget.
Why aren’t superannuation funds invested in a public housing portfolio? The risk is low, returns are solid and the social benefit is obvious. Similarly, why is the public housing stock not expanded and full rent paying tenants encouraged to stay in order to generate revenue and cross-subsidise public housing tenants who are experiencing greater need?
It is disappointing that no funding has been allocated to advocacy services in relation to housing affordability. It is also disappointing that no new policy has been articulated for transitional housing arrangements, as transitional housing represents a significant problem in the ACT. Services to the disadvantaged remain a significant problem. This budget has not presented any mechanisms, for instance, to cater to those unaware of their rights to help them access the services that they need. Services will remain a weak point for this government if it fails to listen to consumers and their organisations. A complaints based system keeps MLAs busy, but it is a squeaky wheel approach.
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