Page 2185 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
If, Mr Speaker, it is not a temporary closure of the public hospital redevelopment process, why will Labor not say so clearly and explicitly now? Clearly, Mr Speaker, they are trying to tread a very careful path between the promises they have made in the past and the ones they will have to stick to if they ever regain government.
I think, Mr Speaker, we also have to ask another question. There are many questions here today which I have not heard answers to yet, particularly from those opposite. How is it possible, Mr Speaker, given the establishment of new facilities on the Royal Canberra Hospital South site, to freeze the removal of duplicated facilities on the north side? How, for example, could you have a new coronary unit established on the south side and leave the one on the north side frozen? Are we going to have two coronary units or two cardiovascular units or two obstetrics units under the new Labor Party proposals for our public hospital system? We do not know. In other words, how do you put a moratorium on part of the hospital redevelopment process and not on all of it?
Mr Speaker, the fundamental question, however, is not how Labor will achieve its promises in the light of the cold, hard day of reality. The real question, Mr Speaker, is how it will pay for those promises. In the last seven days Labor has made promises totalling many millions of dollars to the people of this Territory; yet it has not said one word, not one word, about how it will pay for those promises in the coming months. They expect this Assembly, facing up to the prospect of electing a new government today, to take the Labor Party on trust. "Trust us", they say, "We will find the money. We will deal with the problems. Just trust us". Mr Speaker, I, for one, am not prepared to trust the Labor Party with these valuable and important issues for the people of Canberra. How will Labor pay for its promises?
There are facts we have to face up to. The first fact is that the ACT faces a quite massive reduction in our Commonwealth level of funding. That is a fact, Mr Speaker, which Labor consistently, over the last few months, indeed, over the last 18 months, has declined to recognise or acknowledge. They have declined to agree even with the proposition that we have a serious problem facing us. For them to fail to do that, for them to pretend to the people of Canberra that we can face the future holding our head high, with no worries to deal with, that we can sail into the future without cutting any services we presently enjoy and without looking at any changes in our basic structure in Canberra, for them to say that to the people of Canberra is nothing less than deceitful and it is profoundly irresponsible because there is an enormous problem facing the Territory.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .