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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (10 March) . . Page.. 515 ..

MR SMYTH

that they would use in that contract, and that is the number that is directly affected by the loss of this contract. At the same time, there is a process that has been going now for some time to reduce the full-time number of employees that CityScape has.

MR HARGREAVES: I have a supplementary question. Can the Minister confirm the advice given by CityScape management to staff that it has approval to borrow funds to pay for the redundancies? From where will the funds be borrowed, at what interest rate, and how does the Minister propose that repayments be made when businesses are being eliminated progressively through the deliberate loss of contracts?

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, the redundancy program is properly the responsibility of the managers inside the department. I will seek advice from the CEO and find out how he intends to fund this program.

MR OSBORNE: My question is to the Chief Minister in her capacity as Acting Health Minister. It follows on from Mr Kaine's question yesterday regarding your Government's recent announcement of $100,000 funding for a peer support program for injector drug users. Chief Minister, could you please provide the Assembly with any information on this program? How does it work, and what guidelines are they working under? Could you also provide us with the names of the people in the Health Department who are involved in the tender process and who in the Health Department will be evaluating this program, as you said, I think yesterday, in answer to Mr Kaine's question?

MS CARNELL: Yes.

MR OSBORNE: Mr Speaker, thank you for today's short answers from the Chief Minister.

Ms Carnell: You asked me whether I could and I said yes.

Mr Humphries: You want concise answers. You got concise answers.

MR OSBORNE: I am pleased. It just took me by surprise. Chief Minister, you may not be able to answer this, but can you tell us what process was involved in the tender and what other organisations tendered for the money? Do you have a copy of the report - I think you called it "Survival" - referred to yesterday in the Assembly? Could you provide the Assembly with that information as well? Do you have a copy of that report?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I think I said yesterday in the Assembly that "Survival", which was referred to in the Canberra Times article of 8 March, was commissioned by ADD Inc. and is an internal report to that organisation. It is not a government report. I personally do not have a copy of that document. Access to the document would need to come from the non-government organisation that commissioned that report, and I made that clear yesterday.

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