Page 2226 - Week 07 - Thursday, 6 June 1991
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In terms of health, it will be very interesting to see what damage has already been done by this Alliance Government and what can be done to return the Royal Canberra Hospital to a hospital. Hopefully, we will be able to get it to a community hospital. I accept the concepts behind a principal hospital, but I do not accept that the Royal Canberra Hospital should be used as anything other than a hospital. It is something that I will be working within this Assembly to ensure, and I believe that the majority of members of this Assembly will go down that line. There are other issues within health that are also critical, and they will come up for discussion in an open forum in this Assembly. They will include the concepts of health promotion and community health. We will look at the community nursing centres, we will look at postnatal depression, and we will look at other issues to do with health. And they will be dealt with in open forum.
Similarly, in education, I have already mentioned the schools at Cook and Lyons, but there are also schools at Hackett, Holder and North Curtin. In the cases of Cook and Lyons, it is quite clear that there is a very different situation that can be dealt with immediately. In the cases of Hackett and Holder, if those communities - represented by a majority of their own community in appropriately called general meetings of their community associations - are interested in opening their schools, perhaps on a K to 3 level to start off with, then I am prepared to support that and I am prepared to push it. It is entirely up to the community. There are issues that must be dealt with in terms of leasehold. There is no point in reiterating some of the issues that were raised by Mr Connolly earlier and the debates that I have had with Mr Kaine over leasehold.
Today I noticed in this morning's paper the fact that this Alliance Government had made a $3m offer to AGC to buy back section 52. For those who do not know section 52, it is the car park site opposite the Parkroyal and opposite the Boulevard theatres. Of course, because the lease conditions have been broken, this community is entitled to terminate that lease. It is entitled to take that land back because that firm has not met the lease conditions. In fact, what has happened here may have been the most appropriate way to go about it, and that is something that needs to be looked into. The whole administration of the leasehold system needs to be taken out into the open and the best possible options considered. The best possible options, particularly for renewal of leases, whether they be residential or commercial, should be considered.
It is my own personal view that these options should at least include the renewal of leases on a rental basis, so that the leasehold system is put back on the basis upon which it was founded - that is, a landlord and tenant relationship - so that this community can have the advantage of having the wealth that it has in the land. We are a very fortunate community, and this system needs to be
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