Page 3353 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 21 August 2018
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going quite slowly. At this rate most of the people who are seniors today will not see their suburb become age-friendly.
There is no specific money in the budget for men’s sheds, despite the great work they do in our community for both the mental and physical health of older men. We have seen $80,000 in annual funding for seniors grants, which is welcome, but that is for all seniors groups to apply for. Many of these groups are in vital need of significant capital injections and even for ongoing operational costs. This relates also to the debates we have been having in this place recently about the community contribution scheme of clubs.
Many seniors groups have written to me and to other members of the Assembly about how valuable they find the in-kind support of clubs for holding their meetings, ensuring that they do not have to pay for the meeting rooms. That is something that will disproportionately potentially affect older people’s groups.
There is a very welcome $100,000 for the seniors rights service at Legal Aid, and I am looking forward to hearing more about how that will operationalise. About six per cent of seniors are apparently subject to elder abuse. That is a terrible thing and we must do whatever we can to improve the situation of those who may be physically, mentally, emotionally, financially or in any other way abused by other people, many of whom are people they believe care about them or should care about them. It is a very sad situation.
Another area I will touch on is hydrotherapy services. A number of older people have contacted me about the importance of hydrotherapy services and the benefit they bring in terms of the mobility of their joints. Access to the hydrotherapy pool at the Canberra Hospital will be removed, in favour of moving everyone to the pool at the University of Canberra Hospital in Bruce. This is not particularly amenable for people on the south side of Canberra, and when you combine it with things like the changes in buses it will see someone coming from Goodwin Village in Monash having to change buses four times each way on their way to the hydrotherapy pool in Bruce, probably removing any potential benefit they have received from the hydrotherapy by the time they have to get on and off four different buses on their way home.
The cost of maintaining the pool at the Canberra Hospital, according to an answer from the minister, is about $143,000 per year. The same people who live at Goodwin in Monash will have to catch a minimum of three buses to access any hospital in Canberra under the proposed bus network.
In the Canberra omnibus survey the government have a target of 80 per cent of Canberrans agreeing that Canberra is an age-friendly city, which they are achieving. But if you look only at the answers for those aged over 60, they are not reaching their target. Seniors specifically do not feel the city is age friendly. Eleven per cent of our population were aged 65-plus in 2012 and that is projected to increase to 22.5 per cent by 2062. So in 50 years the percentage of our population aged 65-plus will have doubled.
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