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I spent the
week in Australia with the Work and Pensions Select
Committee as part of our current inquiry into the
Government Carers’ Strategy.
I arrived in
Sydney on Saturday morning (having left London late on Thursday)
which meant that I could spend Sunday exploring Sydney and
recovering from my jet lag before a busy week of
meetings.
On Monday 12
May we went to the British Consulate where we met representatives
of the Australian Government Department
of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous
Affairs in the morning. After lunch we went on to meet the
Chair of the Taskforce on Care Costs and then the head
of Carers NSW.
On Tuesday
we visited the Social Policy Research
Centre at the University of New South Wales where we had a
packed morning of meetings with members of the research
centre.
In the
afternoon we went back to the British Consulate where we met
representatives of the South East Sydney
Commonwealth Respite and Carelink Centre, before flying to
Adelaide for the second stage of our trip.
On Wednesday
morning we visited two Carers’ centres in Adelaide before dropping
in to the Parliament of South
Australia for a guided tour and lunch. We visited two more Carers’
organisations in the afternoon, Carers
South Australia and the Office of Disability and
Client Services.
On Thursday
we began by meeting the Director of the Office for the Ageing before visiting the
Aged Care and Housing Group where we met some
wonderful people and were treated to an excellent barbecue
(although I couldn’t bring myself to eat the kangaroo
steaks!)
In the
afternoon we met the Director of the South Australian Government’s Social Inclusion Unit
before returning to the hotel to meet the Director of the Centre for Work and Life from the University
of South Australia.
An early
start on Friday morning to fly back to Sydney and then back to the
UK. I was back in
Bradford by mid-morning on Saturday.
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Week beginning 12 May
