Page 3422 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 25 November 1992
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To come to the detail of Mr Moore's motion, he is saying that the Acton Peninsula site should be retained for all of these things. I can only read into that that he means solely for these things. He is not admitting of any other potential use of the peninsula. He is saying that this Assembly directs the Government that it retain the use of the Acton Peninsula for these facilities. He is not saying that we might admit of the possibility of other uses as well.
I mentioned before that I believe that public opinion about Acton Peninsula is changing. Three years ago, that kind of proposition put by the Government may well have got majority support. But opinion has changed. The Royal Canberra Hospital is no longer there. I think a debate about that is totally unproductive today, and I am not going to get into it. That is history. People now look at Acton Peninsula in terms of today's world. There is not a public hospital there; there is no possibility of there being a public hospital there. So, what can and should we use that facility for? For us to say that we will use it for these and only these purposes I do not believe would get public acceptance today.
The discussion document is out there, and a lot of people have had a lot to say about it. There has been no ground swell of opinion saying, "Stop. It may be used only for health-related facilities". There has been no such ground swell. We have to have regard for what the community is thinking about this, and I do not believe that we can confine it to these and only these things. There is an opportunity here to use that prime piece of public property in the public interest - whatever the public perceives that interest to be. I do not believe that Mr Moore is reflecting that. I understand that this is almost a direct quote from the Labor Party policy and, if that is the case, I say that Labor Party policy is not reflecting it either, just as Labor Party policy does not reflect public opinion on a lot of other issues - and we will not get into those right now. Even the Labor Party, if that is what their policy says, ought to be having another look at it.
I think, frankly, that the Labor Party is forward looking enough to review their policies. Any major party that publishes a policy and then says "That is immutable forever" might as well write itself off the political agenda. You cannot write a bunch of policies that remain your policies immutably forever. In doing that, you simply reject public opinion about what people expect of major parties in government. If that is their view here, they have locked themselves in.
Not only can you not commit the use of the Acton Peninsula solely for these purposes; the other side of the coin is that the Liberal Party does not agree that all of these facilities ought to be appropriately on Acton Peninsula. For example, we have always argued that the Acton Peninsula is not a place for a hospice. A hospice, by its very nature, needs to be associated with a major medical facility. People in a hospice are likely to require urgent and major medical attention, and if they are 10 miles away from the nearest hospital they are immediately put in jeopardy by their isolation. I use the word "isolation" advisedly; one of the problems with the Royal Canberra Hospital was that it was difficult to access. I know that people have a sentimental attachment to the old Canberra hospital; but there were some facts, and that was one of them. The Liberal Party does not agree that that is the place for a hospice. Put it next to Woden hospital, put it next to Calvary Hospital, but put it next to a major health facility.
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