Page 3136 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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require any policy work is for the obstetrics department of the Canberra Hospital and Calvary Public to acknowledge the receipt of a midwives care plan. Doing this enables a woman to at least claim funding for antenatal and postnatal care under Medicare. This has the ability to reduce the pressure on public antenatal clinics while providing women with a valuable choice. Six months from when funding was made available, only one woman in the ACT has been able to access any Medicare funding. We believe there have been a number of requests.
The Greens believe that health consumers should be directing policy initiatives rather than the medical union. The Medicare funding was established as a result of a 10-year campaign from women across Australia, with an active branch in the ACT. As I said, both I and my colleague Amanda Bresnan will be closely following progress on the rights of women to self-determination in health care.
I would like to acknowledge that the parliamentary agreement talked about gender disaggregated data. That project is still continuing and is going well, and we look forward to its continued success.
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (12.14 am): We are at the Community Services Directorate. While the Community Services Directorate has responsibility for a range of programs and policies across individuals, families and the whole ACT community, in the interest of time tonight and to assist other colleagues to also get a say, I will restrict my comments to the treatment of disability.
One of the priorities for 2011-2012, as outlined in the budget, is “addressing the demand for disability services by providing a sustained response for individuals who require support as a result of breakdowns of natural and/or formal supports and who are transitioning from school to adult life, and providing specialist after school care and holiday support for young people with complex behaviour”. It also committed to developing a pilot therapy assistant program for ACT schools, both government and non government, supporting people with disabilities by increasing the subsidy per trip for people with wheelchairs and scoping the introduction of a smart card system for the taxi subsidy scheme.
In addressing the estimates committee, Minister Burch made the comment that disability and therapy services are two areas that are often very delicate and complex, and that is acknowledged.
In a media release on the day of the budget, Christina Ryan, general manager with Advocacy for Inclusion, summed it up well when she said:
The ACT budget includes some welcome initiatives but we are still only treading water as people with disabilities struggle to keep afloat with the large level of unmet need and exclusion.
That is a view shared by other groups who refer to the chronic disadvantage of the government, with a history of chronic underfunding and a lack of growth funding. The Auditor-General in 2009 found that available funding for all disability services was not sufficient to meet demand, with a shortfall of $8.3 million on funding applications
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