Page 4308 - Week 11 - Thursday, 25 October 2018
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But even using the figures from 2012, this government would need to build 2,400 public housing dwellings in the next 14 months if it were to meet the demand expected by 2020. In such a situation, what hope does a low income family in this territory have of finding secure accommodation for their children?
Another basic right that we should expect for our children is access to quality health care. Access to this care should begin long before a child is born. We should therefore all be concerned by the recent report that a woman in labour was denied a bed at Canberra Hospital until just 40 minutes before delivering her son.
As reported in the Canberra Times, despite the woman experiencing a high risk pregnancy, her husband, when he rang the hospital saying that his wife was stressed and in pain, was told, “We are too busy at the moment; there are no beds. If you come over, you might just have to sit in the tea room like everybody else.” That is exactly what they were forced to do.
This appalling situation highlights the concerns expressed in a letter written in April by senior nurses and midwives at the Centenary Hospital for Women and Children in which they claimed that the lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk by chronic overcrowding within the maternity unit.
Of course, it is not just the maternity unit at Canberra Hospital that is struggling to keep up. We recently learned that more Canberrans are waiting longer than clinically recommended for surgery and to be seen in the emergency department. Especially worrying is that in 2017-18 only 37 per cent of category 3 patients, who are considered to be in potentially life threatening conditions, were seen within the recommended 30 minutes of arrival. This was a sharp decline from 50 per cent one year earlier, which itself is an unacceptably low figure.
None of this bodes well for our children and their right to access quality health care when they need it. Our children should also have a right to quality education in a safe environment. However, this week the fifth report in a row found that the ACT’s schools are underperforming when compared with similar schools across the nation. In some cases, students are as much as a year and a half behind their peers in learning. Moreover, I have spoken to constituents who have told me in rather harrowing terms that their children do not feel safe at school, where in some cases bullying seems rampant and school leaders seem incapable of stopping it.
Another right that the ACT’s children should have is access to stability. In this chamber yesterday I discussed the known impacts that not having a stable, secure home can have on children and young people. For that reason, this government has openly committed itself to ensuring that children in its out of home care system spend no longer than a maximum of two years in that system. But as we learned during estimates hearings earlier this year, the government estimated that it would reach only 60 per cent of its goal of permanency for children in care in 2017-18, a goal that was already worryingly low.
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