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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2442 ..

MS CARNELL (continuing):

The Government is not presently pursuing an exchange of Acton Peninsula and West Basin for either cash or land at any other location.

She went on to make it clear that there was no way she was involved in any negotiations along those lines. I will be fascinated to see the paper trail that Mr Stanhope spoke about at length but that Ms Follett said did not exist. Yesterday Mr Stanhope indicated in the Assembly that it was this Government that, as it says in the motion, failed to successfully negotiate with the Commonwealth for the retention of the ACT Hospice site on Acton Peninsula.

Mr Stanhope yesterday indicated that the Labor Government had definite tenure of the site; that there were no problems with that; that the problem was that I did not negotiate hard enough. I will have to tell you what happened when we were negotiating. When we were negotiating, the current Minister, said, "Kate, I understand your problem, but the reality is that you always knew it was a temporary facility". I said, "I argued that at the time, but the government of the day went ahead and now we have a problem". He said, "No, no, no. You always knew. The previous Labor Government and now the Coalition Government made it totally clear".

Mr Stanhope this morning said that I was trying to confuse works approval with tenure on the site. I will now quote a letter that the Minister gave me when I was attempting to negotiate to keep the hospice on the site, saying, "Just look at this. You can see I have nowhere else to go. You knew from the beginning". In a letter dated 18 January 1994 to Jeff Townsend, who was then the Secretary of DELP, as it was at the time, from Gary Prattley, who was acting chief executive of the NCA, which was probably something else then, said:

Dear Jeff,

Acton Peninsula/West Basin - Site for Hospice

I refer to your letter of 3 December 1993.

At its December 1993 meeting the Authority confirmed its position on this matter as follows:

. A temporary facility for the ACT Government Hospice could be sited on the Acton Peninsula in the Isolation Block and H-block.

. In this instance, consistent with the Territory Plan, temporary is defined as a period of not more than 5 years.

. In the long term, a permanent hospice or other community health facilities may be sited appropriately in the area focused on West Basin as part of a mixed use development.

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