Page 2673 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 August 1991
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the point. However, I believe that they are in that order. Yet we now have the Labor Government saying that because of this extra expenditure we are going to have to make a different decision.
Prior to the time that this feasibility study was tabled, I had taken some advice. I had sought to determine just what would be the response of the Labor Government. I certainly understood that there would be some explanation if the process was to continue as the Alliance Government had set it in place - fast-tracking it and ensuring that the damage was already done and that it was past repair. If it is a function of this value, it is appropriate that we look very carefully at those figures and try to determine why the change in attitude of the Labor Government. That is something I shall do over the next few days.
Granted Dr Kinloch did refer to Professor Douglas and thank him for some assistance that he and others had given the Rally, but Dr Kinloch read almost word for word - some of you would have heard me in the chamber echoing his words - from the document prepared by that member of the Health Board, somebody who is trying his very best, and with the very best intentions, to see whether he can continue the process and obtain the best health facilities for Canberra.
The reality is that people in Canberra believe that the Royal Canberra Hospital should remain open as a hospital. With a financial imperative - and it is exactly that - and with difficult financial circumstances, we have a Government making a very short-term decision. How long will it be before this community requires more public beds? Where will they come from? The obvious spot is the Royal Canberra Hospital site. The refreshing part, the saving grace, is that at least while it remains a health facility we will be able to reintroduce the Royal Canberra Hospital on the Acton Peninsula as a hospital. The reality is that we could have gone for a general medical-surgical hospital, that option being $11m extra recurrent and $20m extra capital, rather than the community hospital.
I find it difficult to understand why it is that this Labor Government has lost its will. How easy it is in opposition to criticise. How difficult it is in government to do it. It is, of course, a criticism I can quite easily level at myself. It is something I have long taken time to be careful about. When I make suggestions, when I make criticisms, I try to account for them in financial terms.
It is for that reason that I shall take the time to read carefully through the feasibility study documents and then try to understand why this turnaround has come about, why it is that the people of Canberra seem to be being sold out by such a turnaround. I will have no hesitation, having read these documents, in presenting a Bill to the Assembly - it could take almost the same form as the Bill presented to this Assembly by Rosemary Follett some time ago - to re-establish the Royal Canberra Hospital as a hospital on the Acton Peninsula.
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