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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4284 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The CPSU representative also commented that it is easy to agree on a broad vision, but it is harder when you get more specific. That comment repeats the point on implementation. That speaker made a few more specific comments that I will not read out now.

The general practitioners also said that we need an action plan and time lines, and monitoring and accountability. They made the interesting general comment that 9 per cent of GDP is spent on sickness not on health, and no government can really say how much is spent on health. That was obviously a plea for primary and preventative health care, and an expression of concern that our society deals with illness rather than wellness. I think that is actually a very important point. They also made the point quite clearly that professionals' working lives should be accommodated, and that equity has to apply to service providers and carers, as well as consumers.

Daniel Stubbs from ACTCOSS also accepted it as a good aspirational document, but he also made the point that there should be greater accountability, and stressed the notion of equity, as ACTCOSS always does. Comments were also made about the need for greater understanding of hospital finance, in particular cross-border payments, and the need for a hospital summit. I do feel that this is an important point and it is something I might raise again in this Assembly.

If you would just look quickly at the health action plan 2002, I would like to give an example of the reason that people are feeling frustrated with this. You could choose any page, but when you look at "Working with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community for better health", there is a section on our priorities for action for each area. There are broad philosophical principles there, which are good, but once again we do not see any real commitment that tells us what the government will do. Will the government give Winnunga Nimmityjah better facilities? Will there be more drug and alcohol workers?

Talking about cultural awareness, the document says, "We will work with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in developing effective cultural awareness training programs in mainstream health services."We know that they exist but, in an implementation strategy, what we would want to see is how many there are now that actually cross mainstream health services, how many there are in mainstream health services, what evaluations have occurred to show how they are working, how many are needed in the long run, and how many the government is going to provide for the next budget.

Once again, this involves actually putting in short-term, medium-term and long-term plans. What I am hoping is that the government will take this as a constructive suggestion, and that the Greens will get support for the amendment that I have circulated. This amendment requests that the government brings an implementation strategy back here in June.

I will speak briefly to Mr Smyth's foreshadowed amendment so I do not have to speak again.

Mr Smyth: No, I am not going to do that one.

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