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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2245 ..
MR MOORE (continuing):
Rotation of other integrated health care staff through the home-based program will ensure that the specialist skills and knowledge held by the nurses within the home-based program can be shared with other community nurses. This is to ensure that clients requiring long-term palliative care services who do not wish to avail themselves of the specific home-based service can be cared for at home and will not require a transfer to acute care facilities for ongoing support.
MR OSBORNE: Mr Speaker, I will probably need to look at that answer in Hansard. It is an issue that I have been following. I do not know whether Mr Moore was the minister when I raised it first; it might have been Mrs Carnell. Minister, you said early in that prepared piece that no client would be disadvantaged. Could you tell me who actually said that? Have you consulted patients under the current system or their families about what they actually wanted?
MR MOORE: What we are doing is ensuring always that patient care is priority one. When I have checked with Community Care and asked for a briefing as I have expected a question of this nature, the information provided to me has been that no client would be disadvantaged by these changes. I am, in turn, passing that on to you in good faith. No doubt you know the particular officer involved and I would be very happy to provide a further briefing on any detail to you, Mr Osborne.
Not only is it a case of no patient being disadvantaged, but also the reason we are going through management changes is to ensure that we can reach out to many more patients than were being reached by the home-based palliative care service. There is no doubt that the home-based palliative care service was providing an excellent service. The question, though, was whether that service was being delivered in an optimal way to as many people as possible. Of course, we are always trying to ensure that that is the case.
Let me reiterate for Mr Osborne or any other member of the Assembly that I would be very happy for the manager of this area of Community Care to provide a briefing and answer questions, especially since we are going into a long period of recess. If there is a situation where a client appears to be disadvantaged, we will deal with that.
Finally, Mr Osborne asked me whether there was consultation with the community on that. This is about a management restructure. Normally, there would not be the involvement of the community in what is simply a restructuring of the way something is managed.
MR RUGENDYKE: My question is to the Treasurer, Mr Humphries. Minister, could you please give the Assembly an update on the Belconnen milk depot land? I understand that the sale of this property was to fund payouts to milk vendors who decided to relinquish their home delivery runs in the deregulated milk industry. Was it the intention of the government to sell that block before 30 June? When is it planned to go to auction? What return do you expect to receive from the sale of that block?
MR HUMPHRIES
: I thank Mr Rugendyke for that question. It certainly was intended that the proceeds of the sale of that site, or at least the value of that site, would be used to be able to fund the scheme to pay out or buy out milk vendors who wish to exit the
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