Page 186 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 10 February 2010
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completed and I am advised that it is likely that access to educational sites on the internet for the purposes of prisoners’ educational programs and access to email will be restored later this week. General internet use is likely to be restored at a later time, once some final work is undertaken in relation to that matter.
Health
Paper and statement by member
MR HANSON (Molonglo), by leave: I present the following paper:
The state of our health—Canberra Liberals—Health discussion paper, prepared by Mr Hanson, dated February 2010.
MR HANSON: I seek leave to make a statement in relation to the paper.
Leave granted.
MR HANSON: Madam Assistant Speaker, I have presented a discussion paper titled “The state of our health”. The nature of opposition means that, more often than not, we do find ourselves commenting on the government’s agenda. This is all part of holding the government to account and is fundamentally important to our democratic process of maintaining scrutiny of government. Policy development and providing an alternative vision is the other half of an opposition’s role, and the discussion paper I have tabled today, titled “The state of our health”, represents part of that process.
The health discussion paper that the Canberra Liberals have tabled today sets out a vision for health in the ACT and articulates a process whereby we will be engaging with the community in the development of our policies. I intend to spend the next few years having an open conversation about health in the ACT, and the policies that we take to the next election will be a logical conclusion of that conversation.
I have already had many conversations in the last year with ACT and federal peak medical bodies and health professionals as well as with numerous healthcare consumers. I now want to take those conversations to the next level and use a more structured process to develop the Liberal Party’s health policy agenda for 2012. I want to harness the body of intellectual capacity that is out there in the ACT community. I want to use the ideas, the knowledge, the intellect and the experience of health experts and academics in the field to further develop our policies.
The conversations I have already had and the observations I have made have allowed me to develop a view of where our health system is currently succeeding and where it is failing, and they have allowed me to form a view of the strategic direction we should be taking in the development of health policy. I have a view of where our health system is and where it should go; it is how to get there that is the question. I have articulated this in the discussion paper and have also outlined the process I will be following to ensure that our discussions with the key players in the provision of health services as well as the broader community are as fruitful and structured as possible.
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