Page 2168 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
A lot has been said in relation to the budget about the women’s and children’s hospital and I think on balance it looks like a good proposal. But I want to be able to see that we are actually getting new services and that it is not just a case of building a new building and putting the old services in it without any necessary expansion. The impression I got during the estimates hearing was that it was the same amount of services just being relocated into a new building. If that turns out to be the case, it may be that it is somewhat of an extravagance. So I will be watching the issue evolving of the women’s and children’s hospital to ensure that we do see a proper expansion of services.
Some of those expansions of services might be gynaecological services for women as they age. One of the things that we hear about the large investment over the next 10 years in health, which is highlighted in the budget papers, is a health service to serve the needs of the next decade, and there is a rollout of capital initiatives of $300 million as the first tranche of that. The minister kept telling us that we had to do this because of the health tsunami—I shudder when I hear the words “health tsunami”—that we will face in the next 10 to 16 years because of the ageing population. But it is interesting to see that there is very little in the first $300 million rollout that addresses aged care services. I hope that in the next tranche of rollouts we will see much more for aged care services than we have seen in the first.
Going back to the government’s response to the estimates report, Dr Foskey noted in passing that many of the recommendations in this report and most of those in relation to the health portfolio are simply noted. The government have said, “Good, yes, we’ve heard that, thank you very much,” and people will just move on. One of the things not agreed to by the government is to do anything about tackling the difficulty waiting lists for residential services for the aged as a means of addressing long stayers in the hospital and elsewhere. I have been in this place for coming up to seven years and I have been involved in inquiries into aged care, and this is one of the hardy perennials. We really must try and get a handle on what are the waiting requirements for people waiting for aged care facilities.
Seven years have gone by and the government is still saying, “Well, it’s actually a commonwealth responsibility and we won’t do anything about it.” Quite frankly, as a service to our ageing population, that really is not good enough. Our ageing population deserve better treatment from the Stanhope government that just a clear dismissal: “No, we won’t do anything, yet again, about the aged care waiting list because, really, it’s not our responsibility.” It is another one on which I think Mr Pratt could possibly break into a chorus of “not responsible” because that is the standard thing.
When we look at a health system to serve the needs of the next decade, the government is allocating $300 million from the building the future program—that is more jargon in an election year—as the first tranche of a 10-year program to set up the new health system. While most of what is there is laudable and is probably necessary, although, as I have said, there is very little provision for aged care services, the thing that I am principally concerned about is that $63 million, almost $64 million, of that $300 million—more than 20 per cent of that money—is dedicated to forward planning, provisioning projects, defining the projects and capital asset plans. Of the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .