Page 2297 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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cost shifting. People who are talking to me on this say that the minister is well aware of this, but they also say that she just closed her eyes to it. So perhaps when she or her professionals read this they could look into that. That would be greatly appreciated.
The government claim, however, that they have funded more ISPs without actually funding as many new individuals. That is the crux there. While on the one hand there are many people with ISPs who are underfunded, on the other side of this there is a terrible wastage in the public hospital system. When people are hospitalised through an accident and traumatised, leaving them with permanent or temporary disability, it can cost anywhere up to $500,000 in unnecessary hospital time, and that is due to delays in funding for housing and then the following appropriate support post hospitalisation. That is a real issue that we should be looking at, to make sure that for people who experience a trauma and then experience a disability as a result of that trauma we have a much better succession plan to move them through the hospital system and back into the community or into their home as quickly as possible.
There is a real problem also for people who need a topping up of their care and an increase in funding between funding rounds. The process for approving individual support packages is unnecessarily slow, complicated, cumbersome and inept. We only have to look at the appalling treatment of an individual by the name of Mrs Anita Gordon, who has been quite vocal and quite public about this—and not so much for herself but really for her family and for other people in her situation.
This was the lady that staged the sit-in outside the Assembly, you may recall. She had come from Queensland, had given the government 10 months notice that she would be coming and explained that her husband had taken a job with the AFP so that they could look after their 18-year-old autistic son and have the ability to pay for care for him when Mrs Gordon dies. Members may not know this so I will give you an update: she had a very serious stroke about three weeks ago and is now further incapacitated.
The way we treat people here in our system does nothing to help them, relieve stress for them or get them on track to get well. If places in Queensland can get it right, why can’t we follow and look at some of the best practice? The operation in Queensland was running smoothly. There was a commitment that a recurrent individual support package would be given, and the communication between Queensland and the ACT, I am told, was absolutely horrendous. We need to look at our cross-border relationships, cross-jurisdictional relationships and interstate relationships.
How can we expect to attract people to Canberra if we cannot get the basics right? We make people who are vulnerable, who need our support and our help, jump through hoops and hurdles unnecessarily. To say to somebody who is terminally ill, “We will have to make you tick the boxes every two years to get $75,000” seems ridiculous. This particular case may be a single case, but how many more cases would there be? I take it not that many would be in Mrs Gordon’s position—her condition will not improve—but there would be many people who do not want to scrounge off governments.
What would happen if Mrs Gordon does not get this funding? I understand that she is being considered for a further funding round after the two years, which is good, but
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