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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-07-23 Daily Xml
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Parliamentary Committees

Public Works Committee: Strathalbyn Residential Aged Care Facility Expansion

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:02): I move:

That the 89th report of the committee for the Fifty-Fourth Parliament, entitled Strathalbyn Residential Aged Care Facility Expansion, be noted.

Mr Speaker, as you will be aware, the Strathalbyn Residential Aged Care Facility was established in 1988, with extensions built in 2003. Services include permanent residential aged care, dementia care, respite care and ageing in place. The country community of Strathalbyn is growing and requires additional aged-care places. The proposed works will expand the existing residential aged-care facility by 36 additional beds. This will increase the current capacity of the facility from 56 to 92 beds.

The 36-bed expansion includes two new wards and a 24-bed ward for general aged-care residents and a dedicated 12-bed memory support unit. A further feature is a spacious and private lifestyle garden to extend from the 12-bed memory support unit. This new garden is intended to serve as a space for social connectivity and also for residents' relaxation and hobbies.

The committee has been informed that the proposed project represents an opportunity to redesign the delivery of aged care. Of note, the project has included consultation with service and consumer representatives and consumer advisory groups. The design details have been based upon firsthand experience and ongoing service requirements. When complete, the proposed expansion at the Strathalbyn Residential Aged Care Facility is expected to appropriately support community need by increasing the number of available aged-care places.

The estimated cost on completion for the proposed expansion project is $11.4 million and construction for the aged-care facility expansion is expected to be complete by August 2021. The committee is satisfied that the proposal has been subject to the appropriate agency consultation and meets the criteria for the examination of projects as described in the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991. Based on the evidence considered, and pursuant to section 12C of the Parliamentary Committees Act 1991, the Public Works Committee reports to parliament that it recommends the proposed public works.

I also add my very grateful thanks to the member for Heysen for his determination to see this project through. He has worked closely with his community to ensure that their needs were identified early. He has lobbied incredibly hard within government to ensure that this project has been funded and I am very pleased as a neighbouring member, since my community in part will benefit, too, from this project, that the member for Heysen has been able to see it through. It is a very happy day for that reason.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (11:05): It is a very happy occasion indeed for me to have the opportunity to rise to commend the work of the Public Works Committee in this respect. I am grateful for the remarks of the member for Kavel in relation to my involvement in this work as it has developed, and I return the thanks.

We have very much worked together as neighbouring members to work in the interests of our constituents, and indeed our part of regional South Australia, to ensure that this very significant improvement is now being delivered. There is a real context to this work that speaks to the nature of the commitment of the new Marshall Liberal government to the whole of our state when it comes to health and wellbeing and in this respect to ensuring that there are world's best aged-care facilities available for people throughout the state.

We have seen over the 16 years of the former Labor regime—and I might say increasingly over time—a particularly city-centric view of the world, especially when it came to health and aged-care services, such that those of my constituents and others in regional South Australia became used to looking on as significant developments, significant capital investments, were being increasingly made in the city of Adelaide while regional South Australia was left neglected in so many ways. It is not just a rhetorical story. It is not just a theme. This particular project tells that story very clearly.

We go back to January 2017 and a decision by then minister for health Snelling, who literally with the stroke of a pen at his desk in the city closed a community aged-care facility. It was called Kalimna Hostel and it was built by the locals with community fundraising and an effort over a period of years in the late seventies and early eighties with a view to the local community being able to provide for local aged care to ensure that the fabric of the community remained strong so that people, when they moved from home into a level of care, remained in the community, remained connected to their communities of interest and maintained ties that, in many ways, characterise the nature of regional communities.

While on the surface a decision to close the facility by the previous minister might have appealed in terms of its having become no longer fit for a purpose that it had been stretched into performing, the story it told was one of neglect for the better part of a generation of the region. The need for those aged-care facilities in Strathalbyn had been crying out for over a decade. Rather than make appropriate investment, rather than ensure that the facilities were there to provide for those needs in Strathalbyn, the response of the previous government had been to allow the facility in Strathalbyn to care for an ever more dependent and ever more elderly group of people, and then to say, 'Well, when the time comes, if you need aged-care help, if you need aged-care services, oh well, you're just as well off being sent off to Mount Pleasant or possibly over to some distant part of the Hills—

Mr Pederick: Gumeracha.

Mr TEAGUE: —Gumeracha perhaps—‘and you'll just do what you're told when someone in Adelaide suggests that you're part of that broader region, so as good here as good there'. You are dealing with people who might suddenly have found a loved one not down a street anymore but, sorry, they are now 80 ks away, or they are 100 ks away at a facility the government has decided is going to be good enough. Well, it wasn't.

And it goes deeper because what the government had also done was coopt what was a perfectly good hostel for able-bodied older people, and it had allowed people to both age in place and be stretched to try to provide nursing care in the absence of investment, so that Kalimna Hostel was really endeavouring to serve a purpose that it was never really built to serve.

So what do we do as a community? Well, in response to that closure, at no notice to the community and with no consultation, in February 2017 the community met in a town hall meeting that will stay very clearly in my memory. I was just one in the hall, but I remember that the member for Hammond was up front. He was up on the stage. The shadow minister for health and wellbeing, now the Minister for Health and Wellbeing, the Hon. Stephen Wade, he was up front and he was speaking to those assembled.

I acknowledge that the Hon. John Darley of the other place was also on the stage, as was Mayor Keith Parkes. There was no sign of the minister. There was no sign of minister Snelling. He was not there. It was left to the community and those representing the community there assembled to go about formulating a strategy and response. Strath had a track record: it had got together 30 years earlier to build it in the first place. So the community got together and said, 'Right, well, we'll establish a working group,' and a working group was established.

Over the course of 2017 the work was done to identify the need, to identify where the trajectory of the town was headed and, if you like, to go about the same task that happened in the late seventies and early eighties to say, 'We're still interested in the strength of the community. We're still interested in maintaining the fabric of our community. We still recognise the importance of making sure that we provide for the community by having appropriate facilities in place.'

That working group did tremendous work, and I acknowledge all those who contributed to it. It was a combination of demographic health research. There were local professionals, local practitioners, local contributors to the community debate and representatives of the senior citizens as well, and the results of that working group's efforts were then able to be put in a form that could be responded to by an incoming government. So from opposition, the Marshall Liberal team committed to doing right by Strath, and it was a very happy day at the end of 2017, as we headed for the March 2018 election, that we could make that election commitment.

I want to also acknowledge the work of our candidate for Mayo, Georgina Downer, over elections that followed the March election because she backed our vision as well, and there were plenty who said it could not be done. She ensured that our commitment for 24 aged-care beds was amplified to 36, that our commitment for the capital necessary to build the facility was amplified to make sure we could build it all in one go, and that is exactly what we will do. There will be more to be said about it, but today is a very significant step towards that end outcome and I commend the motion.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:16): I rise to make a brief contribution and reiterate all the remarks by the member for Heysen and the member for Kavel, the Chair of the Public Works Committee, in regard to the report of the Public Works Committee, entitled Strathalbyn Residential Aged Care Facility Expansion. I note that I did look after Strathalbyn directly between the years of 2006 and 2010. As I understand it, I have something like 120 addresses attributed to Strathalbyn, so some of my people are obviously directly affected by this.

I reflect upon the comments by the member for Heysen and the shortsightedness of the previous Labor government of using the cover of upkeeping the Kalimna Hostel to the fire safety ratings, a hostel that was on community-owned land, fundraised land, and a community fundraised facility that had been stretched to cater for other needs as time went on.

It was outrageous that, with no consultation, people suddenly found themselves 80  or 100 kilometres away, whether it be, as has been said, at Mount Pleasant, Gumeracha or other places. These people were essentially pulled out of somewhere they called home. It is difficult for people to go into these facilities at the start, but over time—as I know from personal experience with my father—they do accept it as their home, and that is what they call it. It is their home, and just to be evicted ruthlessly like that is completely outrageous.

I commend the work of the member for Kavel and the member for Heysen. I acknowledge the community meeting that night in 2017 at Strathalbyn. Strathalbyn people are a very vocal and strong community, and there were about 300 people there that night. I also want to commend Mayor Keith Parkes and also the health minister, who was the shadow health minister at the time. I absolutely want to commend the work of the community and the working group, who made sure we got the right result. It has been expanded to 36 beds, which will be a real boon not just for the Strathalbyn township but for the area into the future. It is a fantastic result, lobbied and worked hard for by the local members. It is a fantastic result from the Marshall Liberal government.

Mr CREGAN (Kavel) (11:18): I recognise and thank the member for Heysen and the member for Hammond, who have been fierce advocates for this project. I am grateful to the member for Heysen for setting out some of the history in relation to a commitment that was made by the then opposition, now government, to bring this project forward and to address a very serious injustice in the Strathalbyn community.

It was quite clear that minister Snelling was prepared to bring about a state of affairs that would mean that families were, in practice, unable to see their loved ones in aged care on a regular basis. That is a disgrace. That is not a government acting in the interests of its community. That is a government hell-bent on stripping out costs from Health and not meeting its fundamental responsibilities to a regional community.

This was a facility that was brought about by community action. It was a facility that was constructed in part with community funds. The campaign to ensure that appropriate facilities continued to be available in Strathalbyn was also spearheaded by the community and led, of course, ably and in part by the member for Heysen, and the member for Hammond in the course of his time, ensuring that the issues that otherwise would have been left unaddressed were rightly addressed.

That issue burned for some time—it rightly burned for some time—and it is an important and significant day that we are able to report to this place that the community of Strathalbyn will continue to enjoy appropriate aged-care facilities. I am exceedingly grateful to the member for Heysen for his determined and passionate advocacy. He rightly should be proud of this moment, as we are also as a government.

Motion carried.

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