Aged care record set straight
Dear Echo News,   

I refer to the letter from Iris Jones (Echo News, January 10) and feel compelled to set the record straight.

There is not a crisis in the provision of residential aged care places in the district and there is not a shortfall in available beds.

The registration of providers and the funding of service delivery are commonwealth government responsibilities and not those of the state government.

Residential aged care is provided by not-for-profit and commercial entities.

The issue presented by Iris Jones to me, in December 2016, on land at Lot 500 Gavour Road, Wattle Grove, prior to my election, was the lack of appropriately zoned land on which to build residential aged care facilities.

Under the Barnett Liberal-National government its rezoning for aged care was repeatedly refused.

This rezoning, however, was achieved in August 2017 within five months of my election in March 2017.

The private owner has not begun building this ‘ready to roll’ facility, despite major relaxation of planning conditions.

Towards the end of 2017, at my instigation, the government established an inter-departmental aged care availability working group which reported in October 2019.

Mrs Jones was invited to contribute and gave evidence.

Subsequently, a new WAPC position statement encourages local governments to make residential aged care a permitted use in residential zones within local government structure plans.

The government also got the Department of Lands to begin identifying and activating government land suitable for residential aged care.

Here, in 2018, the McGowan Labor government provided Crown land adjacent to Sunshine Park, Lesmurdie, conditional on the operators Roshana upgrading the existing facility, which was done.

Roshana now plan an additional 81 beds, and last year opened a $30 million addition at the group’s facility in Carmel.
And in May 2020, Hall and Prior opened a 160-bed facility at Karingal Green in Maida Vale.

Not to acknowledge these real increases in bed numbers since 2017 and those in the offing is, I think, misleading.

In response to public demand, additional commonwealth government funding was provided to expand home care support that has significantly altered the aged care market.

The state government has successfully made funds available to get aged care providers to open spare capacity (mothballed beds) to relieve the pressure on ‘blocked’ hospital beds.

The state government has never promised to build and operate residential aged care facilities in metropolitan Perth, and I have never advocated that it should.

Hills advocates campaigned for land availability and planning approvals, and I have delivered.

I have no doubt that opportunistic, simplistic and sensational promises will be made by some candidates during the 2025 election campaign as is often the case.

I doubt that the provision of residential aged care will be immune, but it is important that no-one is misled.

Matthew Hughes
Kalamunda MLA

Highway expert advice needed
Dear Echo News,

C Hughes of Voices of Bullwinkel is a passionate advocate for reduced speed limits on the Greenmount Hill section of the Great Eastern Highway (Letters, January 10).

I am not sure on whose behalf Voices of Bullwinkel speak, but judging by discussions on local Facebook groups, I am fairly confident that opinion amongst the residents of Bullwinkel would be pretty evenly split on the changes that they propose.

It is clear that there are safety issues that need to be urgently addressed, but to what extent has speed contributed to the accidents that have occurred?

To what extent is driver behaviour a factor?

Or the alignment of the road?

Or the absence of median barrier?

Will reducing the speed limit improve the situation, or create other, unintended consequences?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I would respect the opinions of those who investigate the accidents that have occurred on the Great Eastern Highway and the experts in road safety who are presumably conducting the Main Roads review.

While I commend the aim of Voices of Bullwinkel to improve community engagement, surely it is better to wait for the outcome of the review, and to press for evidence-based policies, rather than advocating so strongly for something that is more opinion-based, and does not necessarily have universal community support.

C Elders
Darlington

Trucks should stay left
Dear Echo News, 

They like to consider themselves ‘knights of the road’ and some truckies may well be, but some driving overlength, double-bogy trailers (road trains) seem to think they’re driving a family sedan.

Overtaking other semi-trailers of similar size on major highways rather than staying in the left lane, is simply dangerous driving.

As professional road users they have a duty to behave better than that and our police should be enforcing the road rules to stop road trains leaving the left lane other than in an emergency.

A good place to start enforcing the law might be Great Eastern Highway between Midland and Mundaring, where we lose lives too frequently and we see these behemoths travelling well in excess of limits, often in the right-hand lane.

P Carman
Hovea