Page 3059 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 10 September 1991
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At that point Labor believed that the hospital could be kept open. It was difficult to make out clearly what the Government's position was in terms of expenditure, but at that point we believed that it could have been kept open. That was a sincere belief based on our assessment of what had gone on to that point.
The situation at that point was that the Government had indicated a wish to fast-track the closure of that hospital before the 1992 election, for good reason, and the Labor Party in opposition had decided that it was possible for us to retain that hospital. We had indicated to the community, and have continued to indicate to the community, that if the wind-down of that hospital and the redevelopment project had not gone beyond the point of no return we would reopen the hospital. We acted responsibly all the way through. It was other members of this Assembly who walked away from decisions which had been taken by the Labor Government and who put the hospital system into a situation where it was inevitably driven into disarray. That, of course, put the Labor Party in an impossible position in respect of retaining the hospital as we had promised in 1989.
Mr Moore seems to conveniently ignore the amount of community resources that have been poured into the closure of that hospital. Those opposite, then in government, set out to pour ACT funds into that closure at an unprecedented expenditure rate. Something like $100m - according to the review I think it was $108m - has been committed to that project right now. You just cannot ignore that. You cannot ignore the structural changes that have been made to the buildings, the structural changes that have been made within the management arrangement, and the structural changes that have been made to staffing. The Labor Party will not ignore those things because we have to deliver a public hospital system intact and one that we can afford.
What Mr Moore is proposing is that this Assembly and this Government should commit themselves to an additional $10m per year forever for the retention of Royal Canberra Hospital. Mr Moore knows that in 1989 Labor's original plan demonstrated a difference of about $3m in recurrent costs for the retention of Royal Canberra Hospital. That was the steering committee's report and that is what the Labor Party promised to deliver. The Labor Party was prepared in those days to commit itself to the refurbishment of the Royal Canberra Hospital as necessary and $3m per annum in additional recurrent costs - no more than that. What Mr Moore is asking us to do now is commit ourselves to a further $10m of recurrent cost and ignore the penalties that we will suffer by turning our backs on the contracts and commitments that have already been made in relation to the redevelopment project. Who knows what the cost of that will be until we get to the end of the project? Those factors cannot be ignored.
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