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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2437 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

With that history and the Government having agreed to the exchange of Acton, including the hospice site, for Kingston I think it behoves this Government to ensure that it provides a site of equal amenity. That is a hard task because of the joint responsibility for the management and planning of national land. That is the problem we face with sites such as that at Yarralumla Bay which the Government has already chosen to assess. The Government, as part of this hospice process, did place the Yarralumla site in the range of sites that it would assess for a hospice. The Government has gone ahead and assessed that site and the Government has said that on the basis of the criteria given to its consultants the site would be an adequate, acceptable and good site for a hospice.

The one reservation that the Government's consultants expressed to the Government in its report on the assessment of the Yarralumla Bay site was that there was a significant planning issue insofar as the Commonwealth had overriding responsibility for planning issues in areas of national significance such as the Lake Burley Griffin foreshore. Of course this is the crunch issue for us. If we want a centrally located site for the hospice, a criterion the Hospice and Palliative Care Society think is vital, and if we also want what so much of the community wants for our hospice, namely, a site with lake views, then we have no option but to go for a site on the southern shores of Lake Burley Griffin. Every such site is on land designated as being of national capital significance.

We face this conundrum, this catch-22. If for the relocated hospice we want to replicate the pre-eminent site we currently have at Acton in a central location we have no option, it seems, but to place the hospice on land of national significance. If we do that, we run into the catch-22 that it will take six to nine months to progress through the planning steps an application to change the lease purpose or to get Commonwealth approval. It is a lengthy process, and rightly so, to the extent that it requires significant community consultation. Communities that may be affected, including the whole Canberra community, have a right to be consulted on any such plan initiative. Not just residents who live nearby and perhaps have some particular and personal objection but the Canberra community as a whole have a right to be consulted on any initiative of such significance. That is a catch-22 we face, but I think we need to work our way through it.

We have an obligation to the terminally ill in this community to ensure that we do everything we possibly can to deliver to them the best possible hospice and best possible regime for their care. We can only do that by providing them with the best possible facility.

This motion asks that the Government look seriously at the range of sites that might be available in central locations. The Government has already looked at Yarralumla Bay and is now suggesting that we look in addition at Griffith and Garran. But there has been no rigorous assessment of what other sites might be available. Surely we should be seeking to identify every possible site. This should be done through the ACT Government working cooperatively with the NCA, with the Hospice and Palliative Care Society and with the hospice to see what other sites there might be.

The Yarralumla Bay site was discovered by the secretary of the hospice society going for a Sunday afternoon drive, seeing a vacant paddock and saying, "That would be a lovely site for a hospice". It was as rigorous as that. I think we could be a little bit more rigorous than that in identifying and assessing a site with potential significance to

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