Page 4737 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
prepared, it seems, to entertain those proposals. I note that the minister has declined to meet with the proponents of non-government hydrotherapy.
It is about time that this minister stopped wasting time. She said that we all accept that the hydrotherapy pool has to close. We all accept that, as a nearly 50-year-old facility, it does not have much of a lifespan. But we do not want to be in a situation where the hydrotherapy pool at the Woden Valley hospital closes and there is no alternative. This government does not have any ideas, because this government is an idea-free zone when it comes to hydrotherapy.
The minister’s statement today is an almost word-for-word repetition of what we saw in July. They have made no progress, except to criticise Arthritis ACT for going above and beyond.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.34): I thank the minister for this report, because there are two really interesting issues. Firstly, it is about hydrotherapy and the need for it. Secondly, I was even more astounded by the actual quantification of the importance of NGOs in the ACT.
We all know that NGOs are important and do a hell of a lot of unpaid work, but it is really wonderful that a government report is saying that Arthritis ACT is doing three times what it was funded to do. That is something that should be celebrated. And it is not just Arthritis ACT but many other groups as well.
It shows the importance of voluntary organisations and, equally, the importance of public infrastructure. Clearly, without the public hydrotherapy pool, regardless of how dedicated and well meaning the Arthritis ACT volunteers were, if they did not have a hydrotherapy pool in which to conduct the sessions, they would not be able to do it. These are two things that we need to keep in mind.
I am a little concerned by the comments about the training of supervisors. I want to make sure that, in whatever we do going forward, we do not make it impossible to have volunteer help in the future. We do not want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, which is what the Greens are normally accused of, I am afraid. It could be read slightly that way.
I suggest to the government that, while potentially there is an increased cost to more adequately funding Arthritis ACT or, at the very least, somehow funding a publicly available hydrotherapy pool, maybe one of the things that could be looked at in terms of the broader budget context is a bit of a cost-benefit analysis.
As Mrs Dunne said, arthritis is a long-term, chronic and debilitating disease. How many hospital admissions is the current situation saving? Hopefully, in the cabinet submission, which I assume that Minister Stephen-Smith will have to write at some stage, a little bit of work can be done on that. I suspect that, when you look at it from all points of view, it will not be that hard to justify financially. For some people it really makes a huge difference to their lives, and that is why Arthritis ACT has put in all of this unpaid work.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video