Page 985 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 March 2016
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$1.1 billion into our education system to ensure that ACT residents have the best community health services and schools, staffed by the best doctors, nurses, teachers and other skilled professionals.
As assistant health minister, I am so pleased that the ACT government has considerably boosted the level of community nursing services over recent years. We have funded a further 10 community nurses, which enables earlier discharge of some patients from hospital, easing the pressures on inpatient beds. Both nursing and allied health offer home support and treatment services that assist people with chronic conditions or those discharged from hospital with continuing support needs, such as women recovering from breast cancer surgery.
In education, this government has continued to invest, with a record $1.1 billion in last year’s budget. In particular, we committed over $62 million for refurbishing our schools, including, this year, upgrades to Curtin primary, the Woden school and Lyneham High School; a new roof at Melrose high; and new science and food technology classrooms at Lake Tuggeranong College, Dickson College and Melrose high. I would also like to acknowledge the new campus of the CIT being delivered in Tuggeranong.
To close, let me say that this government does care about our local services—all our local services. We will continue to invest in them to ensure that this city remains the most livable city in the world.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (4.12): I would like to make a few brief comments this afternoon about the provision of basic services and how important they are in the ACT, based on comments that are provided to me at mobile offices and other interactions with the community that I have. The common refrain that I hear is that people feel they are paying more and more rates and getting less and less for their money in terms of basic local services. Someone said to me just last week, “If you can’t get the little things right, how can you ever get the big things right?” That is the concern of many of our constituents.
I will run through the list very briefly; Mr Coe has already prosecuted the discussion quite adequately. I will list the things that are commonly raised with me, including footpath maintenance, graffiti on fences and public structures, public toilets being kept clean, mowing, potholes, weeds management, streetlights, and smell from the tip. I could go on for a while, but I will not. And there are the lakes. When I first arrived in Canberra, you used to be able to swim in our lakes. Those days do not appear to be around very often anymore. There are the issues of litter, lack of bins in public places, not picking up litter before mowing and the maintenance of playgrounds. That is just a quick snapshot of some of the things that people raise with me.
As opposed to what Ms Fitzharris said about talking Canberra down, the approach of the Canberra Liberals would actually be to trust the staff of TAMS, to trust the professionals who go about their business every day and let them get on with doing their job. Instead of being focused on light rail and all the money going into light rail, we need to adequately resource, support and trust those workers in that important area of territory and municipal services or urban services, whatever you would like to call it. That is the difference between those over there and the Canberra Liberals.
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