Page 4552 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 20 November 1991
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MR WOOD: The Government, via the Education Department, continues to provide very substantial support, directly through the assistance it gives in relocation, and indirectly, over a long period, in subsidy on rent. Noah's Ark has benefited enormously from the policies of successive administrations in the ACT going back many years. I wish they would acknowledge that sometimes. Because there is now reason for the Yarralumla school to reclaim some of the space presently occupied by Noah's Ark, that important facility must move. Let me be very clear in saying that it is an important and much valued facility. That is why it has had so much help. It is now going to Rivett Primary School, and I believe that they are quite happy about the prospect.
To facilitate that move, the Education Department is providing assistance of $20,000, or upwards. So, we have been very helpful in that. But Noah's Ark finds that is still insufficient. I am disappointed that they do not thank us for what we are doing; and, instead, come back, putting on more and more demands for money. They are a very useful community group, but I believe that the Education Department has extended itself over a long period in providing assistance. That is as far as we can go. At the present moment, Dr Kinloch, given our tight budget, I think they should be enormously satisfied with it and tell us so.
Community Nursing Service
MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, since I enjoy bashing my head against brick walls, my question is to the Minister for Health. Will the Minister confirm that routine first home visits to newborn babies by community nurses will be cut out from 1 January 1992? Does he acknowledge that these visits have been useful in the past in detecting cases of child abuse and postnatal depression?
MR BERRY: I am glad that Mr Humphries asked that question. My response might indicate to him that he might prefer banging his head against a brick wall, because it will be painful. Mr Humphries, it appears, has made a press statement today suggesting that because of some changes in community nursing there will be more child abuse in the ACT, or child abuse will be more difficult to uncover. Mr Humphries may have forgotten, in the short time that has passed since he was the Minister for Health, but community nurses are not police. Mr Humphries would know that if anybody wanted to cover up child abuse in the home they would not let the community nurse past the front door.
It is no more than deliberate and outrageous political scaremongering of the worst kind for Mr Humphries to suggest that management changes which are being looked at in relation to community nurses will affect outcomes in child abuse. I think it is an outrageous suggestion.
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