Page 429 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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For me, apart from the big-ticket items there, as a member for Ginninderra, I am pleased, at last, to see the funding made good for the West Belconnen Community Health Cooperative. This funding is very welcome, although it is very late. The West Belconnen Community Health Cooperative is a community initiative, and I have spoken about this a number of times. It had its first meeting, exploring ways of the community finding an answer to the lack of primary health care in west Belconnen, back in 2004.
Following those first meetings, there was an assessment which was funded by the government and eventually a cooperative was set up in 2006. They set about raising from various sources the $600,000 needed to set up the facility, which is a significant task for any community group. The cooperative, itself, raised in the order of $200,000 and sought assistance from both the commonwealth and the ACT governments. I think the West Belconnen Community Health Cooperative is being used pretty much as a political football.
It was interesting to see when the commonwealth eventually came up with the money. It was done just in time for the ACT election. Although over a number of months, and possibly the best part of a year, the Canberra Liberals encouraged the Stanhope government to fund the full amount of money and get this initiative off the ground, the Minister for Health steadfastly refused to do anything to assist the setting up of a primary healthcare facility in one of the most disadvantaged areas of Belconnen. What really happened here was that ACT Labor and federal Labor pussyfooted around so that they could make a gee-whiz announcement, another stunt, just before the election.
The people of west Belconnen, my constituents, your constituents, Chief Minister, have been waiting for primary health care for two years, after the initiatives were set up and the cooperative was set up. At any time in that time you could have provided the funds if you thought that these people were worth while but you waited for the political stunt three weeks out from the election.
I congratulate the West Belconnen Health Cooperative on the sterling work that they have done. I look forward to the success of the cooperative, of which I am a member, and I hope that it will be the beginning of a great community movement of providing primary health care in the ACT, which is sadly neglected by this health minister and this government. It is interesting to dwell on the things that the Stanhope government could have been doing if it was really interested in participating meaningfully in providing services for the disabled and the disadvantaged in the ACT.
As I said before, while the $3½ million funding is welcomed, there is still very much more that needs to be done. I draw attention to some of the initiatives that this government has declined to initiate: for instance, the $4½ million one-off payment to pensioners and people living on single age pensions in the ACT which we in the opposition proposed in the run-up to the election in recognition of the fact of how hard pensioners were doing it, especially in these straitened economic times. We did this in recognition of the fact that pensioners, particularly single pensioners, were doing it tough.
We seemed to be able to see what was going on in the lives of pensioners. We were reading the studies. We were looking at COTA’s research and what they were telling
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