Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I highlight the fantastic work being done by Co.As.It in Queensland. For 25 years Co.As.It has been providing community care services for the Italian aged care community in Queensland. Director Dina Ranieri and her wonderful staff provide in-home care and also a very dedicated service in their respite centres.

Since 2005, the Queensland Co.As.lt team has been successfully providing training for staff in Italian nursing homes, community health centres and all of the local hospitals in Brisbane and two on the Gold Coast. It has implemented over 600 activity groups for the elderly in local nursing homes. All this was supported by the government under the Community Partners Program within the Department of Health and Ageing—until now.

It is disappointing to the dedicated people of Co.As.lt in Queensland that their application under the new grant was not approved, and they cannot even find out why. They were told that funding under the Community Partners Program would not be available, yet I am advised that other organisations in other states have been funded under the same Community Partners Program. The community has every right to know what is going on. How hypocritical of this government that on one hand they are not funding community organisations that do a great job while on the other hand they have a multicultural inquiry looking at submissions and saying that there should be more aged care places made available to aged migrants with non-English-speaking backgrounds.