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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3696 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

That is in the past; it did not happen. There were reasons why he chose to go that way, be that as it may. But it is now time to go forward with the National Museum and the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Centre and proceed down that path. Even more interesting, I think, will be how we see the proposals for the Kingston foreshore develop. I am very pleased that we are going past the acrimonious side of the debate on Acton Peninsula and the Kingston foreshore.

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MR BERRY (Leader of the Opposition) (11.16): I seek leave to speak on the same subject.

Leave granted.

MR BERRY: As I have been drawn into the debate, I might as well put history in its proper context. Yes, the door of the Royal Canberra Hospital, as it was then known, was shut by me, but not until after Mr Humphries had made the decision that it was going to close and not until something like $100m had been committed to the Woden site. Immediately before the Liberals lost office, Mr Humphries signed a $40m agreement for the diagnostic and treatment block, and only a few beds were being occupied in the old hospital. Obstetrics was all but gone. In fact, I think obstetrics had been moved out at the time, or was on its way. The next obstetrics block was almost complete at Woden Valley Hospital.

Mr Moore: You talk about other people twisting and thrashing about, Wayne. You had the ability to keep it open as a community hospital.

MR BERRY: Mr Moore is right: I could have kept the hospital open. But it would have made the funding situation in the ACT, so far as the hospital is concerned, absolutely ludicrous. It was the Liberals that made the decision to close it; it was the Liberals that locked themselves into that. I was lumbered with it. Nobody wanted to keep it open more than I did, Mr Moore, and you know it.

So far as the Acton-Kingston land swap is concerned, it has been a debacle from go to whoa and it has cost the ACT taxpayers millions. Leaving aside what has happened since the land swap, the land swap itself resulted in the ACT taxpayers paying for the clearance of that site and then handing it over to the Commonwealth in exchange for a piece of land, a large portion of which was ours anyway. Subsequently, we have been left with the responsibility of looking after that as well.

We are told that at some time in the future we will reap the benefit of it. Who knows? We have already paid out millions upon millions of dollars to clear the Acton site for handing over to the Commonwealth. That was a waste of the taxpayers' money; there is no doubt about that. I will support the National Museum, though disappointed that it has ended up where it has.

Mr Humphries: Who chose where it was going to be? Who chose that site, Wayne? Paul Keating chose it.

MR BERRY: He was wrong.

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