Page 1626 - Week 06 - Thursday, 3 May 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Moore, you are debating the issue.
MR COLLAERY: It does not stop him having meetings with them at various hours of the day, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Collaery, please get to the point.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, we know that the Opposition are eager to leave. They have got a party on shortly and they are keen to adjourn.
Mrs Grassby: I did not know about it.
MR COLLAERY: They have got a party. They are proposing to form a party, I understand. They have not got it together yet.
The very important issue that the redevelopment of the hospital system debate brings on is whether politicians should make decisions to the advantage of the majority of the citizens, whether they should pursue policies that advantage the majority. Certainly there have been some agonies for me, as the leader of the Residents Rally, in decision making on the redevelopment of the public hospital system.
As my colleague Dr Kinloch has said, many meetings, many anxious and testing discussions and inquiries - confrontations almost - with officials, private contracting advisers and the like led me to conclude, on the best available advice to this Government, that the vast expenditure that would be required to redevelop the Royal Canberra Hospital meant that other services in this community, particularly in areas that the Residents Rally holds dear, such as the welfare sector and education, might suffer if that level of expenditure were launched upon to preserve a three-hospital system in the ACT.
I took steps to get Mr Humphries to bring in the private medical specialists and others so we could hear all points of view. I am still very much indebted - and I wish this to be recorded in Hansard - to Dr Vance for advancing the contrary view which we saw again in the Canberra Times this week.
There are hard decisions to make, and those decisions have been made by the Residents Rally for the good of all Canberrans, not for our short-term electoral gain which, I am sure, was certainly not advantaged by this decision. It is a question of courage; it is a question of community politics and being able to make decisions free of over-focused and narrow political perspectives - decisions on the best available advice for the community.
Out of that came the implementation of other Rally policies, including the establishment of a birthing centre - a matter in which we had taken considerable
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .