Page 1924 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 June 2015
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I know that Ms Fitzharris, for example, will welcome the fact that for the first time we will have a dedicated mental health team based in Gungahlin to meet the needs of people in that growing community. But we are also expanding crisis support right across the city, to make sure that when people are facing crisis as a result of mental illness they are getting better support.
We are also expanding our capability to deal with acute care in areas like the secure mental health unit. So this is an unprecedented level of increase in funding for mental health services—an area grossly neglected, I think historically, but one that this government has committed significant funds to, and we are doing so again in this most recent budget.
I said when I became health minister that I had three key priorities: better service delivery in our hospitals and healthcare sector; a greater focus on mental health; and a really strong focus on keeping our community healthy and active and reducing demand in our public health and hospital system.
We have delivered on all three key areas that I outlined in this year’s budget. We are expanding service delivery. There will be more elective surgeries. We are expanding our emergency department, with a 33 per cent increase in beds—21 extra beds in our emergency department at the Canberra Hospital.
There are also very important commitments in health infrastructure spending. This government, since 2009, has spent over $900 million on health infrastructure upgrades and new builds. And we continue that record this year. This year the budget makes appropriate provision to see construction get underway on the new University of Canberra public hospital, a facility that will deliver dedicated subacute care for the first time in a purpose-built facility that meets the needs of an ageing and growing population.
Keeping Canberrans healthy, providing the care when they need it, improving service delivery, focusing on mental health and keeping people active are some of the key elements of this year’s budget, and I am very pleased that Dr Bourke has highlighted the importance of these in his motion.
Of course, Madam Speaker, these are things you will not hear the Liberal Party talk about, because they know that their story is just plain wrong. They can focus on light rail in the obsessive way they do. They are the only ones obsessing about it. When you look at the cost, when you look at the expenditure on light rail in terms of the operations of the Capital Metro Agency in this year’s budget, it is less than one per cent of the ACT government budget, but it is all that you will hear them talk about.
What about the over 50 per cent spent on health and education in this year’s budget? Let us see where their priorities really are, and let us have a debate about investment in health. I will be very happy to contrast this Labor government’s record on investment in health and hospital services with their record, which has continually seen reductions in funding, the most recent, of course, being over $228 million in the most recent federal budget. (Time expired.)
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