Page 3069 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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cheques. You don’t have to do anything.” Well, you do. You have given up autonomy to your GST for a deal you have no idea of the detail of because it was rushed.
That is indicative of federal Labor and ACT Labor. It is indicative of federal Labor that they would engage in this shocking policy on the run that has led to them dumping a first-term Prime Minister, that has been endorsed by ACT Labor because they are just desperate. They were just desperate to say yes. They were desperate to please Kevin Rudd and Nicola Roxon and federal Labor—for what reason I do not know. Was it in the best interests of the people of the ACT? Well, they did not seem to have much regard to that. They did not negotiate. They did not care. They simply gave up half our GST not knowing where it was going to get to. If that is the way that health policy is developed now under ACT Labor and federal Labor, I think we are in trouble. (Time expired.)
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (12.07): (Second speaking period taken.) Just to continue, the other thing that comes out of the federal government’s abandonment of the national funding authority is, of course, a statement by a spokeswoman for the health minister, Nicola Roxon, that the decision to scrap the funding authority removes a layer of bureaucracy. Of course, part of the reforms was to add no extra bureaucracy. So, even there, there is an admission of the flawed nature of the reforms. The problem for our government here is that they cannot present to us a clear picture of what is going on. We have made decisions without having any knowledge or any understanding of the detail of what it is that we have signed up to.
Perhaps that is the template now for the Labor government. People are buying blocks at Molonglo without having any idea of where their block might be. Perhaps it is just standard now that that is the way that Labor governments will operate. The problem for the ordinary person in the ACT is that this affects the level of service that they will receive or, in many cases, are not receiving. It will have an impact on wait times. It will have an impact on their ability to get elective surgery. Indeed, the report made public by the federal government yesterday by the minister shows that, again, the ACT has by far the longest wait times in the elective surgery lists in the country. That is what happens when you let the list, which in October 2001 was standing at 3,488, blow out to 5,484 as of 22 June this year. That, by any measure, is a disaster for the people of the ACT. There is no clear plan from the minister to rectify this problem.
Moving on to another area, the question of mental health was discussed in the committee and the progress towards improving the mental health of people in the ACT. One of the criticisms of the budget has come from Lifeline. It makes the comparison that the government seems more interested in, for instance, speed cameras than it is in suicide. The suicide prevention strategy was discussed. It is an issue out there in the community. It is something that we do not discuss enough. There needs to be a political discussion, not just in this jurisdiction but in all jurisdictions, about how we, as a country, deal with the issue of suicide.
Depression affects one in four or one in five Australians. The number of those Australians who are affected by those who have attempted suicide or who have completed a suicide is not far beyond those numbers. When such events occur it is very sad. Having a discussion about the nature of suicide, the causes of suicide, what it is that we as individuals can do to prevent suicide, how we can develop resilience as
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