Page 610 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I question why it is that in the territory we cannot be at the forefront of reform, why we cannot be the leaders in national health policy. I would like to think that the answer to my questions could be found somewhere within this document, which apparently is presenting a long-term vision for 2020.
While there are plenty of aspirational targets in the document and a lot of feel-good sentiments, the document actually lacks the necessary depth to deal with the challenges in this area. In many cases, the draft plan raises more questions than it answers. For example on page 4, it says that the implementation of the plan will involve significant investment and some disinvestment in services. I would be very interested to know what those disinvestments are. What does this actually mean? To my mind, it suggests cuts to programs or cuts to funding and, given the current economic circumstances, I would be very interested to find out what those. Hopefully, the minister can advise us on that.
At face value, the document does suggest some worthy reforms in areas of investments, e-technology, greater consumer access to information, empowering consumers with regard to their assessment and treatment for mental health illness and providing a holistic approach to treatment. These are worthy words and aspirations. They are actually commonly used phrases in the national mental health debate and have been for some time. Although I agree with the sentiment, it is worth noting that this is little more than a cut-and-paste of some of the language that is actually being used in other jurisdictions and nationally and continues on from the mental health debate that was being led by the Howard government.
The question, though, remains, and the real question is: how do we actually get to where we want to go? How do we achieve these aspirations? For example, how many staff do we need? How do we fund them? How do we retain them in the face of a population that is ageing? And so on. They are the questions that are not answered in detail in this document.
Of great concern is the assumption on page 15 that there will be no change to the patient flow from the surrounding region. Maybe I do not quite understand this but my concern is that we have an ageing population in the ACT; we know that we have the health tsunami that is coming out of this; and if we are presuming that the number of people that we look after from New South Wales will remain static whilst we have growing demand in the ACT, I think that that is a false assumption. I would seek clarification on that issue. It just seems odd that we would be growing in demand in the ACT but not in New South Wales at the same time.
These are all questions that need answers and they do require sound leadership to deal with them. We simply cannot cast more taxpayers’ money into this problem without those answers, without knowing what the detail is, what the outcomes are and what the solutions will be to some of these problems in more detail. This document really should be populated with targets, with outcomes, with dates, with numbers; instead it merely lists the problems, the areas of need, and then it has some, I guess, fuzzy words on it. But what we need to do is yes, identify the problems but better articulate how we are actually going to deal with those problems.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .