SCUAAC Briefing 9 February 1994 Mr Steve Gelding District Manager representing the Department of Health and Community Services
Tabled Paper 345
Tabled Papers for 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997; Tabled papers; ParliamentNT; Tabled Papers
1994-12-01
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https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00042
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/290544
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/402612
ALCOHOL ABUSE COMMITTEE - Wednesday 9 February 1994 KATHERINE MEETING at 9 pm. I would not really comment. I do not think it really impacted one way or the other. That is my personal view. Occasionally, people would want to go to the bottle shop for take-aways earlier. Mr ORTMANN: Yes, but there was not a bitter feeling throughout the town? Mr GELDING: I did not feel it. Mr POOLE: The actual report from the Drug and Alcohol Unit basically said it was not a big issue with the locals and there was no evidence from Health, the police etc to indicate that it was an advantage one way or the other. Mr MCCARTHY: That is contrary to the comments this morning. Mr POOLE: Yes, but you would expect that. Mr BELL: How do the alcohol programs fit into your overall responsibility as an administrator? Mr GELDING: I have 9 programs. It is everything that the department does except the hospital: community health, urban and rural, mental and dental, environmental, health promotion, aged and disability, disease control, family and children services and alcohol and other drugs. In the department, there are 7 of us district managers. Alice Springs and Darwin have an urban and a rural district manager. We have 9 program directors. Shirley Hendy is the program director for Alcohol and Other Drugs. We are on the same organisational matrix, on the same line. The program areas have a Territory-wide perspective and look at policy issues, Territory-wide funding issues, equity of resources etc and they also provide professional and technical assistance to us. If you like, they provide a professional line to our senior staff. Thus, senior environmental health officers have a dotted line reporting mechanism to the program director but we actually implement the program. I am accountable for the program in Katherine. However, we are not alone in the wilderness because there is the support from the program area. Then we all report to Graham Symons. It is a very flat structure. Graham reports to Ray Norman. Basically, that is the department's operational structure. Mr POOLE: That you for your time, Steve. I know you are a very busy man. 11