Page 5008 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 26 November 1991
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Government seeking to get out of design packages. They were not material supply contracts, and they were not those that might involve too many people being taken on under contract. They would not have been excessive payments. Mr Berry said:
If the Labor Government had "cancelled" the hospitals redevelopment project when we came to Government in June, the estimated cancellation penalties are (conservatively) in the order of $7.12m.
I would not disagree with that. I will accept it, wherever that advice came from. I am sure Mr Berry got good advice from those project managers and developers. But, of course, that relates to the big works over at Woden. Mr Berry knows that. It may also relate to the big relocation works for radio therapy, the bunkers and other things that were being moved.
The fact is that the D and T block was a wholly separate entity. It was, on the advice available to the Rally, reversible. I am sure Mr Moore is listening, because he has a Bill still before the house on this. Let the record show that not an answer has come to the four points we have raised. We have been waiting for the moment to put these issues over. We have tonight.
Mr Connolly: You have picked 12.30 am; really good timing.
MR COLLAERY: Yes, we have been waiting. This is a suitable time.
Mrs Grassby: The Canberra Times went to bed hours ago, Bernard; do not worry about it.
MR COLLAERY: This is not for the Canberra Times; this is for the record of this Assembly. This is what we did to assist many people in Canberra, particularly Canberra's north, where Labor have traditionally polled well. This is about why the Royal Canberra Hospital project was not revised after Labor came to power. Mr Moore has some credible arguments to the effect that there were reasons why there should have been a further look at the whole financial balancing of the exercise. I will leave that argument to him when his Bill comes forward tomorrow, hopefully, or later.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I stress that Mr Berry has given no explanation to all those thousands of people who have pressured Labor to get back into that hospital redevelopment area and see what it can do to reshape it, not reverse it; to do something that would mean that there would be a community hospital there for this Canberra region - not just Canberra itself, but the ACT - in the
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