David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak to the House about the need for all three levels of government to work together for the benefit of small communities in our rural and regional areas. These are not communities who have people who are sitting there with their hands out. Many of them work very well and strongly together to achieve outcomes. A good case in point is the community of Two Wells south of Mallala in the Adelaide Plains area of the electorate of Wakefield. This community had the opportunity again this year to see the Two Wells Melodrama at the Two Wells Community Centre, a production put together by locals. Mark Boon, the scriptwriter, Brian Wilson, the musical director, Lance Morgan, the production manager, and Ann Marie Eaton, the choreographer, put this production together at the Two Wells Community Centre, which is a building funded and built by the community and is now there as a community facility.

This activity brings the community together in that people like Maria Pellizzari of the Red Cross and others do the catering and provide three-course meals. There is strong involvement from members of all sorts of clubs. We see 250 people a night over four nights turn up to participate in this strong community event. This is a community that is alive, thriving and working together. But this parliament needs to work with people in other levels of government to make sure that we give this community the support it needs. I particularly talk here about aged and health care. This strong community has the Mallala Community Hospital. It is no surprise that it is called ‘The community hospital’, because the board is a community board, supported and run by the community.

The federal government has worked with the community to put funding into aged care licences—this is Butler’s View, which is the aged care part—but there is a drastic need for further, joint work between the levels of government to make sure that acute care and the delivery of home and community care are put together in a joint way such that the community gets the ongoing viable and effective support they need for their population. The fact that they are a smaller community, dispersed in this rural and regional area, does not mean that they should have a lesser standard of care than that delivered to other people around Australia. I call on the state government to work with the federal government, as I work with the board—Mrs Maxine Varcoe and others at the hospital—to find the model of care that will work for them and their community, and to each play their part in coming together to contribute to a model that will deliver sustainable and effective aged care and health care for the community now and into the future.