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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 11 Hansard (8 December) . . Page.. 3231 ..

MR STANHOPE: Mr Speaker, very briefly, if I may address your ruling and direction there, I would point out that the very issue that I am discussing here was actually mentioned in the report. I just say that. It is not as if I have just dreamt it up. It is actually in the report. It may not be specifically mentioned in the response, but the specific matter I talk about is in the report.

I did have one other issue I wanted to speak about very briefly anyway. I am minded to do it now. There are many other matters that I think do warrant response. But I notice that the Government's response does deal with the question of the location of the hospice. It is quite coincidental, or fortuitous perhaps, that it is a matter that I raised with the Minister in question time today.

Mr Moore: And my responses are consistent.

MR STANHOPE: Not 100 per cent, Minister; but on track, perhaps. I just take the opportunity to support the recommendation which the committee made on the hospice. I do detect in the Minister's responses to me on this subject a tad of irritation or frustration, the basis of which I do not quite understand. This is a serious matter. The licence for the hospice runs out in June. We rise on Thursday until the middle of February. This matter has not yet been appropriately dealt with. As things stand, the licence expires in June. We come back in February, which leaves us only four months.

We have a most significant facility on Acton Peninsula, which the relevant Federal Minister, in his latest billet-doux on this, suggests cannot appropriately remain there once the museum is operational. It is not in the interests of the provision of hospice services in the ACT for the hospice to be temporarily relocated, should that be the decision that is taken. It seems to me not to be in anybody's interest that the hospice move to a temporary location, subsequently to be relocated anywhere. There is the question of the money and whether or not, in the swap that was done of the Acton Peninsula for the Kingston foreshore, arrangements were made with the Commonwealth for the Commonwealth to fund the fact that we are going to lose a multi-million-dollar facility. These are all legitimate questions, questions that should be asked and should be answered, and I do not detect a willingness on the part of the Government to actually grasp this issue and be as forthright as it should be about what the future of the hospice is. The fudging that is going on is extremely concerning.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MS CARNELL (Chief Minister and Treasurer) (4.06): Mr Speaker, for the information of members, I present the Government's response to the Standing Committee for the Chief Minister's Portfolio Public Accounts Committee Report No. 7, entitled "Review of Auditor-General's Report No. 9, 1997 - Fleet Leasing Arrangements", which was presented to the Assembly on 24 September 1998. I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

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