Page 5219 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 27 October 2010
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homes in north-west Belconnen during the set-up phase. The committee found that 86 per cent of respondents had difficulties getting appointments, 75 per cent found it hard to get a GP and 63 per cent found GPs to be too expensive. These problems contributed to 18 per cent of people in the survey not having a GP and 17 per cent using Calvary hospital as a substitute for visiting a local GP.
One of the main impetuses for the setting up of the Charnwood Community Health Committee in the first place was the issues raised by Charnwood pharmacist Brian Frith when he said that he was providing essentially primary healthcare services to a range of people who would come into his pharmacy in years past because there was literally nowhere else to go and doctors were closing up surgeries across west Belconnen one after the other. He, being a pharmacist, was at the pointy end of the issue and saw the decline in people’s health because there was no reliable access to primary health care in west Belconnen.
My motion here today recognises this research and its outcome and acknowledges the success of the West Belconnen Health Co-op. It recognises that the co-op model may well hold the secret to future success for community-based health services across the territory. There are considerable benefits in this approach. First and foremost, it relieves the pressure on our hospitals and emergency departments. With the ACT’s waiting times amongst the longest in the country, the government should be examining every opportunity to reduce them.
A community-based health service like this gives the community ownership of that service. They will have a commitment to the service and they will be more likely to support it. It is able to establish links with other allied or synergistic community-based services. The West Belconnen Health Co-op has established a range of community partnerships that reach into the social and health issues facing youth in west Belconnen as well as refugees transitioning into community life. It brings communities together to solve problems which until now they have been captives of. The ingenuity, initiative and local vision of the west Belconnen area to establish the health cooperative exemplifies the best characteristics of our community.
These citizens have come together to redress a serious area of need—GP shortages, a lack of affordable bulk-billing services and ready access to those services. It has created opportunities for community volunteering and membership engagement. There are 5,400 people at least across the west Belconnen area who are benefiting from all of these achievements.
The experience of the West Belconnen Health Co-op should be held up as a shining light for the kinds of success that can be achieved by our community when they put their minds to it and they get a little support from the government. It should be held up as a shining light to a government that at various stages during the development of this model was asleep in the darkness of skepticism and indifference. Now that the runs are on the board, there is an opportunity for the government to embrace the model, to see how it can be applied elsewhere and to assist other groups in that aspiration.
I would like to heartily congratulate the West Belconnen Health Co-op on its amazing success and I commend their success to the Assembly. In doing so, I would like to pay
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