Page 1718 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
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not interested in knowing what they are; they do not have a plan for health, they just snipe from the sidelines—are timely access to care, aged care, mental health, chronic disease management, early childhood and vulnerable families, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.
One of the first priority areas is improving timely access to care. That is around improving access to elective surgery, which, as I said, we are in our fourth year of record access to, and removals from the elective surgery waiting list. Also, access to cancer treatment; our linear accelerator project is on time, and again that will provide increased capacity and reduce waiting times for those who, in the next few years, are going to need access to radiation treatment.
These priority areas were issues I have taken to the community, that I have had public meetings on. I have engaged with health professionals and stakeholder groups in extensive consultations around these and I have taken all the feedback provided through those to make sure that the access health document reflects what the community is seeking. Further detail sits under the access health document, so people can see what the priority areas are, what we have done and what the plans are for the future, to make sure we are going to be in a position in the next, say, 10 to 15 years to deal with the increases in demand that we are predicting.
This is particularly relevant to aged care, mental health and chronic disease management, because the numbers that are being seen in planning documents will not be able to be managed in a system built as we have now. These are issues we have to have extensive plans around to be able to meet that demand for service.
These are things we will stand by, things we will deliver on, but they are six key priority areas. In all of my consultations with people about access health, I do not think there was any disagreement about these being the key ones that ACT Health needs to plan for. So I look forward to working with health stakeholders, as I do on a number of areas, to implement access health and to make sure that we report against it and that our public reporting of health performance is in line with what access health is seeking to do.
ACTION bus service—security
MR SESELJA: My question is to the minister for transport, Mr Hargreaves. Minister, in May 2007 you agreed that there were serious problems with security at bus interchanges and you stated that you would be moving with urgency to address this, with significant improvements promised by July 2007. Today there are still very few, if any, new CCTV passenger security cameras at all interchanges and there are not—
MR SPEAKER: Mr Seselja, we do not have a minister for transport.
MR SESELJA: I am sorry. My question is to the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. It relates to transport. Mr Speaker, would you like me to start again?
MR SPEAKER: If you wish.
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