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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2442 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The letter is signed by Mr Denis Wilson of Reid. Mr Speaker, through you, to the Chief Minister: Mr Wilson had approached me prior to the implosion and asked me to check with you whether or not asbestos had been removed. You indeed found out that information and provided me with the answer. When I explained it to Mr Wilson he said, "I am very pleased about that", and was very satisfied with it. It is not a case of somebody who is just writing a crank letter. Chief Minister, it strikes me that there is a serious breach of protocol as far as this matter of mail goes. How can this happen? What other breaches of protocol are there? What are you going to do to resolve it?

MRS CARNELL: I can guarantee that there is no breach of protocol at all here. The reason that Mr Wilson was rung by my office yesterday was that he wrote to us, and there was an article in the newspaper over the weekend about an unnamed engineer. We were not confident that Mr Wilson was that unnamed engineer, as the letter he had written to me was somewhat similar. We rang to check whether he was that engineer and whether there was anything more we could do for him. My office has no idea whatsoever of who is putting submissions to the inquiry, but I understand that the names of the people who are putting submissions to the inquiry are quite public anyway. The names of the people who put forward submissions would be part of the public part of the inquiry, but I guarantee that my office has absolutely no idea who is putting submissions to the inquiry at this stage. But I am sure that, at the end of the process, that will all be made quite public by the inquirer. Again, if there are no postal facilities, we will make sure that there are some. There is no information to my office on who is putting in submissions.

MR MOORE: As a supplementary question, Mr Speaker, I seek leave to table a copy of the letter.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: My question is to the Chief Minister. In the Canberra Times of 16 July, in relation to the decision to use implosion as the method of demolition of the old Canberra Hospital, you said:

We were told, even by that time -

that is, December 1995 -

by the building industry, off the record, shall we say informally, that they believed implosion would be the cheapest way to go for large buildings.

Chief Minister, is there any record of that advice? If so, will you table it today in the Assembly? If not, will you give this Assembly an account of it; and will you be giving a copy of, or an account of, that advice to all of the inquiries which are proceeding?

MRS CARNELL: The answer is yes. My understanding is that that advice came from the Glenn inquiry and has been made available to the inquiry.

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