Page 3783 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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There have been different ways in which it has been addressed. I understand that not one of them has been successful, on behalf of either the people in the industry or the residents. In some instances, the parking has been allowed to continue under specified guidelines at specified times. In other instances, there has been a blanket prohibition on those vehicles entering any suburban area for the purpose of home garaging, if you like. I would hope - certainly, before the end of this year - to bring to the community a set of guidelines to cover the issue.
Department of Health - Public Relations Unit
MR HUMPHRIES: My question is to the Minister for Health. I refer the Minister to an editorial in the Canberra Times of 29 April this year which stated:
No sooner had we thought commonsense was to replace politics and ideology as the main ingredient of the administration of health in the ACT, our hopes are dashed. Terry Connolly made such a good start ... He announced the superfluous public-relations section was to go.
In an article in the same paper, just nine days before, Mr Connolly asked why the ACT Health Department spent $360,000 a year on public relations and employed four journalists in its public affairs unit. I would have to ask the Minister: Why, then, is the projected budget for his department's public relations unit for this financial year - money for a unit, the Minister said, was superfluous and had to go - virtually unchanged? Why does the communications unit now employ five staff, instead of four?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, I think that this question was asked and answered at the Estimates Committee. I do not know whether Mr Humphries or Mrs Carnell asked the question; they were chopping and changing at the Estimates Committee. I made it clear that I wanted that communications unit to desist doing some of the work that it had previously done. Mr Fraser indicated that it was now doing other duties. If you wish, I will get a written statement from Mr Fraser as to that. You will appreciate that the extent to which a Minister says that that public servant does this, and that public servant does the other, is somewhat limited. I had expressed my scepticism of the need for a lot of the work that that unit had been doing. I am advised that that unit is no longer doing much of the work that I had been critical of but is, in fact, performing other duties.
MR HUMPHRIES: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. The Minister told the Canberra Times on 20 April:
It -
that is, the $360,000 -
is a lot of money and the public expects as much money as possible to be going on nurses nursing and doctors doctoring and wardsmen assisting nurses to make their jobs easier, and less on PR.
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