Page 1957 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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Mrs Dunne: You always trivialise it.
MS GALLAGHER: I am not treating it trivially; I am saying that if you have proof that either of our public hospitals have run out of basic supplies then prove it. You have not been able to. You have put out four or five media releases alleging that there are no supplies and that if anyone puts up their hand they get sacked. You have not proven it.
Mrs Dunne: Point of order. My question was about what measures the minister will put in place to ensure that the supplies go to where they are required. The minister is saying “Prove it; prove it” in relation to something that we are not talking about. We are talking about what measures are in place to get the supplies where they are needed, on the day they are needed, and on time.
MS GALLAGHER: I answered that question at the commencement of my answer.
Child and family centres
MS MacDONALD: My question is to the Deputy Chief Minister in her capacity as Minister for Children and Young People. Minister, the government committed, through the social plan, for the construction of two flagship child and family centres at Gungahlin and Tuggeranong. The second centre, the Tuggeranong Child and Family Centre, opened in June this year. Could you please update the Assembly on how these centres are operating?
MS GALLAGHER: I thank Ms MacDonald for the question. As members would be aware, the child and family centres are the cornerstone of the government’s commitment to ensuring that families in our community have the support structures they need. They were a new model of providing service from government in the sense that we provided $11.5 million to build two purpose-built centres and then co-locate a range of government services with them.
The model did grow out of the Lyons recovery centre, which was established post the 2003 bushfires, where a similar model was put in place. The positive feedback of having the ease of co-location of a range of services was certainly a significant part of the positive feedback from people who use the Lyons recovery centre.
We decided to adopt this model in terms of providing services for children and their families. The two obvious places to begin were Gungahlin and the Tuggeranong region. The Gungahlin centre opened in May last year and the Tuggeranong centre itself began delivering services in July 2006. It was not until June this year that the Chief Minister opened the new centre, which is conveniently located at the Tuggeranong town centre.
Both centres have already proved a real success. I know the opposition is very supportive of them, too, from their attendance at the openings—along with Dr Foskey. Already our early data for the 2006-07 year suggests that 668 families have accessed both centres over that financial year, which is 11 per cent above what we had set
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