Page 2025 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2017
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Children that we are delivering on in this budget as well. Now that it has been in operation for five years, we have an opportunity to expand the centre, very importantly.
I note the AMA’s comments in the Canberra Times today. I welcome their support of our budget, and I know that Minister Rattenbury will welcome continuing to talk to the AMA about the significant investment the government is making in mental health services, including the recent opening of the Dhulwa secure mental health unit and our commitment, which we announced funding for in yesterday’s budget, to providing an inpatient mental health unit for adolescents in Canberra. This is one important facility that the community has spoken with us about; we are really pleased to be able to fund the delivery of this important new service.
We are getting on with delivering the commitments that we took to the community in 2016, commitments in prevention, commitments in primary health care, commitments in community-based care, and commitments in acute and specialist services.
In essence, we will provide better care when and where Canberrans need it, and we will ensure that funds are allocated to the areas of greatest demand as our city grows. I welcome in particular, Madam Deputy Speaker, your acknowledgement that the city is growing, your acknowledgement that demand on health services will continue. I agree with you that, in part, a measure of outcome is not simply the inputs into the system.
In the real world, we must also acknowledge the role of the commonwealth government in funding health services. For my part, as the health minister working with my fellow health ministers across the country, I think we can collectively do better. The commonwealth has in its power a significant funding agreement, particularly regarding funding of our hospital system. I will be working with other health ministers and with the commonwealth health minister to make sure that we address the gaps and to make sure that we can get funding where we most desperately need it, in the primary prevention space, so that we can fund the services and the programs that prevent people from being unwell and, if they are unwell, get them back on their feet as quickly as possible and have a really serious crack at addressing the significant burden of chronic disease that our community faces.
That is why we will continue to invest in prevention, primary health care, community-based health care, and acute and specialist care. The focus of any health system should be on keeping citizens well, on keeping citizens healthy. It should not be on sickness or, necessarily, hospitals and building. It should be about the quality of services that we are providing to our community, aligning those services with their needs. That is exactly the important work that has been underway for some time and that is reaching a very critical point.
In question time, I made reference to the very important work under the territory-wide health services plan. That planning work has been underway within the directorate for some time as part of the broader reform work and also as part of the important work that we need to do to plan for the delivery of services at the University of Canberra
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