Page 2865 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 14 August 2019
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consultation with the users so that they actually would understand and believe what the government was saying. I was really surprised because that was a sad reflection on the state of communication here. I think we need to thank the Liberal Party for putting more emphasis on this, which is clearly, for a number of people in Canberra, a substantive issue.
Part of this, I am sure, is simply down to semantics, and there may be a lot more fulsome meaning, a lot more in what the government is saying than what is being interpreted. Hopefully, that is in fact the major part of this issue. But, as someone who has attended a lot of government meetings and been to a lot of government consultations, I can totally understand why people do not feel 100 per cent reassured by some of the things that are said. I sincerely thank Mrs Dunne for bringing forward this motion, despite the fact that I am actually going to support the government’s amendment.
The government’s amendment has some positive things in it, and one of them I would like to highlight is (1)(d):
… that, in line with Recommendation 2 of the Report, the Health Directorate will work with Arthritis ACT to discuss the terms of the existing Service Funding Agreement to ensure both parties’ future interests are addressed, acknowledging that this will require additional funding to secure access to private facilities and/or transport …
I am very glad that the government is acknowledging that to solve this problem is actually going to require additional funding and I very much thank the minister for saying this.
I do not agree with the Liberal Party’s views that I am joined at the hip with the Labor Party. That is simply not the case. As we noted when this was debated in the Assembly earlier, the ACT Greens understand that hydrotherapy services are crucial to the health and wellbeing of many Canberrans and these services need to be accessible and available to those people who need them. Hydrotherapy can offer improvements in mobility and quality of life. The preventative and rehabilitative value for people with chronic muscular, osteo and other conditions has already been discussed in previous debates and previously today.
It is clear from the petition that was presented previously and the fact we are having this discussion again today and of course the Nous report, that there is an ongoing and demonstrated need for a range of aquatic-based therapy services in south Canberra that are accessible to people for whom the University of Canberra hydrotherapy services simply are not accessible. When we debated this matter in May the government committed to keeping the current pool open until a suitable alternative was found, and since then, of course, there has been the Nous report.
The report recommends that CHS and the ACT Health Directorate engage in depth with Arthritis ACT to make clear the basis on which it has drawn its conclusions regarding the safety and fit for purpose condition of Canberra Hospital pool; the ACT Health Directorate conduct a review of the funding agreement with Arthritis ACT; the ACT Health Directorate and CHS select an option to collect enough data on the users
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