Page 471 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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MRS CARNELL: I wish to ask a supplementary question. Mr Berry, could you please undertake, at least on notice, to answer whether the 30 Vietnamese male nurses who are currently being employed are a cost to the ACT Government, in wages, supervision or medical indemnity?
MR BERRY: If you had put it on notice, I could have asked about the exact employment status of every individual in the hospital system, and I could have had the information here for you today. But now that you have raised it without notice, I will inquire of hospital management as to their names - and addresses, if you like - and their employment status in the hospital system.
Mr Humphries: Will you tell us when you find out?
MR BERRY: I will tell you in due course.
Garbage Bins
MR WESTENDE: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is directed to the Minister for Urban Services. In relation to his announcement to trial big bins later this year, would he indicate: Firstly, when and where will the trial take place; secondly, how long will it take; and, thirdly, why is there a delay?
MR CONNOLLY: It is good to see that Matthew Abraham's column is read by members opposite and sets the agenda. The first thing to say is that they are not big bins. They are not the 240-litre bins which have been, quite properly, rejected by an Assembly committee, on environmental grounds. We are talking about a wheelie bin - a bin that has wheels and is easy to move around - of perhaps 120 or 140 litres; not the bin that Mr De Domenico was photographed putting out the rubbish in during the last election campaign.
This is a medium size bin which, with a once-weekly collection, would provide about the same capacity as what people are currently entitled to. At the moment you can put out two 55-litre bins twice a week, so you can have rather more collected now. It will be trialled in conjunction with kerbside recycling, we would hope - that is, a kerbside arrangement for material. It is not something that can be jumped into and done for the whole of Canberra. There is an expense involved, so government has to look at this with all other expenses. You are constantly telling us to be careful about expenditure; we are being careful about it.
At the moment I cannot tell Mr Westende which precise suburb it will be trialled in, although it is intended that it will be a north side suburb or a couple of north side suburbs. Slightly earlier than that, we may be trialling it in a Housing Trust joint development in Ainslie, which is an appropriate area in which to trial something; but that is still being developed. The intention is that we will see how it operates, and we will get community reaction. It is easy for commentators to say that there is a clear community view on this; I think there is a very divided community view. I get about equal numbers of letters from people saying, "We must have big bins immediately", and those saying, "We must never have big bins"; so this compromise that the Labor Party is proposing needs to be trialled.
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