Page 1231 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Ms Follett states, or implies, that service has been reduced. The advice from my departmental officers is that no services have been reduced. I can assure the house that I have agreed to no grants being defunded and no monetary situations being altered. I did an on-the-spot inspection. That has to be responsive ministerial administration of a portfolio. Secondly, I accept that, for the time being, the director who wrote that letter is disappointed about a decision that did not give her sole occupancy of the Weston Creek health complex.
I want to put on the record that I invite members to visit that complex. That complex is not built to be a community centre. It has consulting rooms.
Mr Berry: It is built to be a health centre.
MR COLLAERY: I do not deny Mr Berry's interjection that it is built to be a health centre. It has consulting rooms. It can be described, from a community concept, as having small, even poky, corridors and rooms. It is not suitable, in my view. Members have heard me state in this house that the Government has the ambition of providing a purpose-built community centre. All I can say is that the sort of letters expressing disappointment that I receive often come from community organisations whose funding ambitions no government can always meet. And the Leader of the Opposition knows that.
She has got up with a sort of pretentious or hurt air, saying that somehow or other the house has been misled; that somehow or other her personal integrity has been assailed. There may come a day when that will happen. But I can assure the house that this is not the day when that will happen. Ms Follett knows that I was responding to remarks by Mr Berry - highly exaggerated remarks that we had "pillaged" community assets. It was an outrageous comment. The community assets remain where they are. In fact, as you well know yourself, Mr Deputy Speaker, we have entered into new commercial leasing arrangements on a shopfront frontage in Brierly Street which improves the overall metreage used by the community centre, so far as I know.
I am responsive to the needs of that centre. I have indicated that I am concerned about the existing housing for the aged care service and the youth service opposite Matilda's. I have taken those issues on board. We have recently laid the foundation stone for a community centre in Tuggeranong. We are going ahead, as the Chief Minister mentioned in his budget review statement today, with the Griffin Centre things - matters that this Opposition facing us did not grasp the nettle on. Members opposite did nothing about the Griffin Centre crowding when they were in office.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .