Page 3187 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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Ms Burch: Give us a copy of it, Hanson. You can’t produce it. You sit there bold-faced telling fibs.
MR HANSON: Mr Hargreaves—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Order!
MR HANSON: We have seen her inability to engage effectively with the Flynn Community Group and her selection of Alkira and Gumnut to occupy the building of the former site of the Flynn primary school.
Having mentioned the Shepherd Centre and Noah’s Ark—and I understand that there are issues that fall within DET, Mr Barr’s portfolio areas, as well—I would like to reiterate the big win for the Shepherd Centre and Noah’s Ark. This is about children. This is about disadvantaged children. This is about children with a disability and, in the case of the Shepherd Centre, profound disability—profound hearing loss.
As to this government’s rhetoric about us and opposition for opposition’s sake, when it came to it, we exposed the fact that this government was prepared, either through negligence or incompetence, to let kids with a disability fall off the edge of a cliff. Was it a matter of departments not talking to each other? Was it disregard, or was it, as Ms Burch does—and Mr Barr does too—a failure to even listen to people who are desperate and crying out in need?
We saw this also with Karen Costello, whom I mentioned earlier. Earlier this month the Canberra Times ran a story entitled, “Going home after three years in hospital”. It talked about the case of Karen Costello, a quadriplegic. She spent 1,100 days as a dischargeable patient at a Canberra hospital. That is just disgraceful. She could have been discharged, but she spent 1,100 days there because the department within the minister’s portfolio could not find her a suitable home.
It is quite clear that the minister lacks an understanding of her portfolio. We would have seen her performance laid bare in question time this week, particularly today. It is quite clear that her inability to manage her portfolio is having a profound effect on disabled people in the ACT. It is having a negative effect on non-government organisations and it is having a negative effect on carers in the ACT. There are 43,000 carers, it is estimated, in the ACT. Although not all of them are looking after disabled people—some look after the elderly, some look after children and so on—the vast majority are looking after people with disabilities. I take this opportunity to pass on my regards and commend the work of Carers ACT and Dee McGrath—the work that she does with her organisation to support carers. I call on the minister to make sure she does everything within her capacity to support that organisation and support carers more generally.
Moving on to her portfolio of Multicultural Affairs, it is quite clear that the government and the minister are letting this area slip. The minister does not have an understanding of what seemed to be some fairly simple processes, particularly in terms of measuring programs that are introduced and failing to establish targets to measure whether they are successful or not. If you do not implement those targets and
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