In NSW on 1/1/05, the boards were scrapped as 17 area health services were merged into 8. It was a major restructuring at a cost of who knows how many millions of dollars? Now there is talk of going back to the old system. Governments have too much playmoney.

A good article. All that the limping health care system needs is another layer of bureaucracy consisting, as it will, of local grocers and solicitors etc.- about seven thousand good jobs just waiting to be allocated by political fiat. Only the Howard/Abbott combination could come up with such a proposal - the amazing thing is that they have both managed to keep a straight face.

The health system in Australia has been a total failure or disaster under the Howard govenment. A patient with serious infection and injuries need to wait at the Emergency department for more that 5 hours, in some cases up to 8 hours or more. I am an immigrant and I find it 100% frustrating when I have to come to any hospital for some reasons. My system has srious pain in her leg and required MRI scan from a specialist doctor and she was told that she needed to wait for at least 3-6 months or more to schedule an appointment. What can we do we we get sick, needing hospital treatment? What I can see is just frustion and prayers from our own months? What a shame to have such a good economy manager while we do not even have working health system!
We also have a so-called good govenment, causing our ordinary Australians to have empty pockets. I personally think the existing howard govenment is a shame for the whole nation.

Civic engagement, inclusiveness and encouraging access to the trainng policies in a allied skills support movement to help "intergrate" community with the social services and primary health - is cost effective if not a first step. Civic engagment in its proper context would help improve cohesiveness in areas of sustsinable CIVIC HEALTH + WELLBEING, so urgently needed to develop infrastrucure essential at ground level.

Nicola Roxon, I have wriiten extensively on the issue over the years. I believe services (health, community, jobnet/s, centerlink, local government etc) has drawn a invisible line between informal and formal society (regional and local silo's) which in many ways has now become a core problem. (DEPLETION CAUSED BY SILIO CULTURES).

We need a NO WRONG DOOR POLICY.

Our local advisory board is exclusive and totally service driven - so with the so called "family (not) resource center". The excuse is always to blame "oh but we cant because of Cairn's... we never get to meet "WHO? in Cairns"... it is a whirpool of buck-passing with all the "politics as usual" political-party member problems.

We do need some local resources-information-training, some equity and common-sense based inclusiveness. I have tested every which way only to be left (NGO) looking ADVERSLEY stupid for ALL the effort, innovation, FINANCIAL COST for "Having a Go".

I look forward to the ALP campaign as I feel we need to align with civic development-policies in a organised mannar. It is my own view that in terms of community development we have the cultural-case-studies and experience to draw on.

Accountablity being a NGO's/community issue is difficult and why we CANDOO (NGO) have not expanded in ways that would otherwise be possible. With such poor social capital, it is the system itself here, that is not accountable. We work small, doing practicial helper-things (unpaid and unrecognised) regardless of the impartiality of local staff who fail to respect the need to engage in a way that could glue us all around the needs, to suit common goals required by us, the local and regional spatial based residents.

http://www.miacat.com
.