Page 1461 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 26 September 1989
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both the community development fund and the HACC funding and to find a method of ensuring that the funding is on a needs basis.
It is important to review home and community care objectives, to look at their cost-effectiveness, appropriate and accessible care and appropriate targeting. We need to look carefully at the criteria that have eliminated certain groups from this sort of funding. There are certain groups who would dearly like to have access to the sort of funding that HACC provides. When we talk about the home and community care program we need to look at the groups that actually miss out on this type of funding by a quirk in the way they operate. I draw attention to the Cancer Society and the arthritis society, which I believe are not eligible. We need to check to see that worthy groups like those, and many others as well, can have access to this sort of funding.
I draw attention to some of the funding that has been commented on by the Minister. I refer to the Red Cross Home Help versus nursing home beds. I draw attention to the factors set out in the comment by the Minister that 80c per day cost to the home and community care program is a great contrast to the $43 to $81 per day of government subsidy required for somebody who is in a nursing home. The home based services not only are much cheaper but are often the preferred option of people who get to the stage where they are nearly ready for nursing homes but prefer to remain in their own homes. So everybody wins. To a certain extent, though, a temptation in our society is to say, "Provide more money to the nursing homes because the nursing homes are able to write a far better submission". Perhaps we have to look very carefully at what we wish to do and look at a strategic plan for achieving access and equity.
Mr Wood: No; from quite different funding sources.
MR MOORE: Yes, of course, but the importance is still there. We need to look at priorities in the expansion of quality and availability of the services, particularly for the younger disabled - and some of these things have been drawn attention to by the Minister - access and equity, and that those future directions be well established.
The Rally for some time has talked about the desirability of three-year budgeting. In regard to groups which rely on government handouts, whether they be combined Commonwealth-State government handouts, as indeed applies to HACC, or whether they be of the nature of the community development fund, we need to try to determine the sorts of funds available versus the funds required and be able to present them on a three-year basis. Our suggestion is that there may be a way to get a group consideration of common needs through a summit based or a needs based method of dealing with this sort of funding.
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