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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (14 December) . . Page.. 3042 ..

MR WHITECROSS: Mr Speaker, my question without notice is to Mrs Carnell in her capacity as Chief Minister. Chief Minister, in answer to a question from Mr Osborne on 21 November you stated that the Chief Executive of the Chief Minister's Department, Mr John Walker, receives a total remuneration package of $176,476. Can you confirm for the house that neither Mr Walker, nor his wife, nor any members of his family, nor any company or companies associated with them, have received any payment from the ACT Government by way of fee, allowance, refund of expenses, or payment for any other purpose apart from this package, and that the Government has no commitment to make such payments in the future?

MRS CARNELL: No; the Government would have a commitment to make those sorts of payments in the future because there are such payments as relocation expenses and all of those sorts of things which are just regular payments. I think you would have found that you would have done something similar for the current head of the Education Department. Relocation payments, rent subsidies, and so on are very much part of that whole approach.

MR WHITECROSS: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Chief Minister, will you table, before the Assembly rises today, Mr Walker's offer of employment and contract, and correspondence between the Government and Mr Walker relating to the conditions of his employment, including Mr Walker's correspondence to your office, and any details of any relocation expenses and rent relief which will be payable to him?

MRS CARNELL: Mr Walker is not on a contract. It is impossible to table a contract that does not exist.

MS HORODNY: My question is to the Minister for Health, Mrs Carnell. Yesterday Mr Osborne said that he had a guarantee from you that you would not sell the Kippax Health Centre over the Christmas break. Can you assure the Assembly that this is the case, because we have had a lot of concerned people ringing us about this issue?

MRS CARNELL: I can guarantee, Ms Horodny, that we will not be selling the Kippax Health Centre, either over the Christmas break or at any other time in the next 12 months. We have given an undertaking to Mr Osborne and to others that we will give it another go. I made a comment in answer to a question from Mr Connolly the other day about what we were doing with Kippax. I said in response to that question that what we would not be doing is continuing with a half to three-quarters empty building that was costing us a fortune - money that we could otherwise be spending on services. In response to the community's concern about selling Kippax, we are willing to give it another 12 months to see whether we can make the centre work. At the moment it is not working. The number of services being offered out of this centre has become fewer and fewer over the last - - -

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