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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (24 August) . . Page.. 2331 ..
MR STANHOPE (continuing):
As a basis, surely the members of the Assembly who are being asked to support the expenditure of public moneys of this order have a right to see a detailed business plan and a right to question and discuss the issues with officials and those who actually prepare the business plan. Members of the Opposition have not had provided to them a detailed business plan going to every aspect of this proposal to expend $7.5m of taxpayers' money.
The proposal is superficially attractive; it does potentially have great benefits for the ACT community. Of course, it also potentially has dangers. It is only reasonable that the members of the Assembly who are being asked to support the expenditure of this level of public funds have available to them the most extensive detail on any aspect of the proposal, and we do not have that.
I will speak on a couple of other issues briefly. The Chief Minister raised the issue of the hospice. It may be that we will debate this issue tomorrow. But this constant putting around of the position that the Labor Government's placement of the hospice on Acton Peninsula was in some way reckless in the sense that there was no certainty of tenure is simply wrong. It is a position that is simply not justified by the facts. At the time the hospice was placed on Acton Peninsula the peninsula was territory land. It was land occupied by the Territory for territory purposes. Quite simply, it was the hospital. The lease was held by the ACT; it was ACT land.
It is true that after the construction of the hospice there was a period of five years for works approval provided by the Commonwealth to the ACT Government. What has happened is that there has been deliberate confusion of the impact of the works approval provided by the Commonwealth to the ACT Government for the purposes of conducting a hospice on the site. The land actually has national significance; so the Commonwealth does have a role.
But the land was territory land, to the extent that when discussions commenced in relation to the possible exchange of land the Labor Government explicitly, in all discussions with the Commonwealth, excised from the proposal the land on which the hospice was located, for the very sensible reason that we had expended significant amounts of money there, it was territory land and it was fulfilling a vital territory purpose. Those are the facts. It was only after the land was exchanged that the then Government, this Government, for reasons that have never been explained, decided simply to give the Commonwealth the hospice as well and, in doing that, made no provision for its relocation or for compensation as a result of losing such a valuable asset.
It was only after the land exchange that the Commonwealth and the ACT entered into a licence which expired in June. It is certainly the case that the Labor Government achieved a five-year works approval, but we did not have a licence or a lease because we did not need one as it was territory land. It was only after we gave the land away
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