Page 5002 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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Australia down the garden path and into believing that it was still possible to save the hospital. I think those of us who knew what was going on and who could see the facts as they stacked up knew perfectly well that there was no hope at all of that.
MR MOORE (12.10 am): I will be brief. The one major error in what Mr Berry said can best be illustrated, I think, by saying that the article in the Canberra Times was accurate.
MR COLLAERY (12.11 am): I rise to read into the record a ministerial statement here on 13 August 1991 by Mr Berry. He said at page 3 of his ministerial statement:
At no stage did the Labor Party promise to reopen a community hospital at Acton.
I remember the rest of us looking incredulously around the Assembly and I thought, "What does this mean in terms of confidence motions and all the rest?". That was an extraordinary statement. I am not going to start a substantive debate by saying that we were led to believe something else, but Mr Berry is lucky that no substantive motion was moved as a result of that statement. He knows it. I remember that Mr Moore went straight out and grabbed a Hansard. We did, and we found a clear, unequivocal statement in the Hansard by Ms Follett that a Labor Government would reopen the hospital. At the same time you say that you had never promised, you put a Bill down. You put a Bill down to reopen it. What a polemical display from this Minister!
Of course you promised to reopen it and of course you know that the Residents Rally expected that you would take every step and every endeavour to meet the 40,000 signatures that people had collected; to have the decision looked at quickly and usefully and productively; to see what could be changed and whether we could not, in fact, save money. But you did not do it. We were not conned; but certainly we were led to believe, by virtue of a Bill on the floor of the house and the statements by your present Chief Minister - statements you had made time and time again when attacking Mr Humphries - that you would, in fact, do all in your power to settle community concerns about the continuation of a community hospital on the Acton Peninsula.
You cannot quibble on that. You know it. I have been listening tonight. It might be good gamesmanship, the Labor-Liberal games you play sometimes; but the fact is that a great number of people in Canberra thought that your first step would be to call for the papers, to look at the transfer schedule and to see just exactly what you could keep there in terms of some issues.
Let me make a very conclusive statement. The Labor and Liberal parties find this amusing. The "Hospitals Redevelopment Update" was a newsletter that Mr Humphries had instigated. No. 7 in that series is dated 17 May 1991.
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