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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 1 Hansard (22 February) . . Page.. 191 ..

MR STEFANIAK: Yes. Here in the ACT, of course, our teachers, along with the other public sector unionists, want a 9 per cent increase. Our teachers and our other public servants want a 9 per cent increase. This Government's offer is 7.5 per cent, not 3 per cent as offered in New South Wales. It is 7.5 per cent, with part of that funded - - -

Mr Whitecross: Over three years.

Ms Horodny: Over three years.

MR STEFANIAK: No, 18 months. Part of that is funded through efficiency trade-offs. Indeed, 4.3 per cent is not and 3.2 per cent is. I think it demonstrates clearly that our offer to our teachers is a significant one and demands very careful consideration by our teachers. Of course, the real significance of the situation in New South Wales is that it shows up just how misleading the ACT Trades and Labour Council's campaign has been throughout the current enterprise bargaining dispute. This is not about right-wing ideology, as the TLC claims; it is simply about making sure that any pay increase can be afforded by the people who pay for it, the Canberra community.

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care, Mrs Carnell. Mrs Carnell, last year you gave a guarantee to this Assembly that you would not sell the Kippax Health Centre for at least 12 months in order to "give it another go", but in the same answer you said that you could not guarantee that ancillary services would remain at existing levels. What action has the Government taken to improve the Kippax Health Centre and get more services into that centre, and how will services be improved if ancillary staff, including administration staff, have been moved out, if they have been?

MRS CARNELL: What we have done is exactly what we said we would do. We need better management for Kippax Health Centre. We need a professional property manager, basically, to get new services in there, to encourage people to take up tenancy in the building, so that we can make the health centre work for the people of Kippax. Under the previous Government the number of services went down substantially. In fact, as Ms Tucker would know, there are already only private practice doctors in the centre in Kippax. We are attempting to fill the centre with tenants, having inherited it as a half-empty centre with horrendous on-costs. To do that we have determined that, as Health does not have any particular expertise in property management and letting space, we will get in somebody who is an expert in that sort of area.

We are looking at what sorts of changes need to be made to the centre to make the space more appealing to health professionals who would like to operate out of that area. We hope that inside 12 months we can do what I made it clear to the Assembly we would do and actually get tenants in the Kippax Health Centre and have a centre that is not half-empty and costing precious health dollars. I want to see health dollars spent on services, not on empty buildings.

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