Page 2400 - Week 08 - Thursday, 5 August 2021
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MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Families and Community Services and Minister for Health) (3.28): I just want to speak briefly on the Canberra Hospital expansion, which of course is on track and on budget for delivery in 2024. The approval of the project today ensures that Canberrans will indeed get access to these new facilities and more capacity as soon as possible.
The Canberra Hospital expansion is the result of careful planning and extensive consultation with the Canberra community over many months. There have been ongoing design discussions with consumers and local residents. The third round of clinical user group consultations has already commenced. That builds on more than 250 separate user group workshops with clinicians that have already been completed.
Between December 2020 and March 2021, detailed designs on the new building were released as part of the pre-DA consultation process. Those were, in themselves, the culmination of more than 12 months of consultation with hospital staff, consumers, hospital users, families, carers and the general public, including the local community around Garran and the Garran Primary School.
This is truly a project for all Canberrans and, indeed, those in the surrounding region as well. Over the coming months, we will continue to consult with hospital staff, consumers and the local community on the further details of the design, which I look forward to sharing with the community and members of the Assembly.
The increased capacity and fit-for-purpose facilities that this project will deliver will genuinely transform critical health care for Canberrans and patients coming in from the surrounding regions. As I said earlier today, early works to prepare the site are underway. Many of those works across the campus have been completed, with the construction of new buildings and refurbishment of wards and spaces across the campus.
While the critical services building forms the centrepiece of the Canberra Hospital expansion and modernisation program, the work to modernise the facilities across the campus will continue. We will continue to consult consumers, clinicians and the broader community about that, as we are also doing through the Canberra Hospital master plan. This is another important milestone in the biggest investment in health infrastructure since self-government. I welcome Minister Gentleman’s announcement and I look forward to continuing to get on with this project.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bail Amendment Bill 2021
Mr Hanson, pursuant to notice, presented the bill, its explanatory statement and a Human Rights Act compatibility statement.
Title read by Clerk.
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