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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 8 Hansard (25 August) . . Page.. 2446 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

Whether the existing building which is used as a hospice was to be a long-term hospice is a question that we will never know the answer to, but during the process of establishing a hospice there was planning for a new building on that site. I am sure that was what Prattley was referring to when he said:

There is no avoiding the history in relation to this. Kate Carnell did not want the hospice on Acton, and she made sure it happened.

Ms Carnell: Why? Because it was going to be a waste of money - and it was.

MR BERRY: And you set out to prove that by negotiating it away without compensation. Let us not try to avoid the truth of the matter. That is the truth of the matter. The hospice could have stayed on that site indefinitely. It could have become the permanent hospice, or a new one could have been built there, had this Chief Minister not wanted to get rid of the hospice off the site. It was a straw man that she created herself. She argued that the hospice should not go there. Everybody else thought it was a great idea. Kate Carnell argued that it should not go there, then she set out to see to it, at great cost to this community. Three million dollars will be added to the waste that went with Bruce Stadium. I was not responsible for Bruce Stadium and never have been, but I expect to be blamed for it next week.

Ms Carnell: I am proud of it.

MR BERRY: I am proud of the hospice too, because it was put in the right place, and it would still be there other than for your actions. You have to take responsibility for the waste which has occurred as a result of your actions, and you have to take responsibility for the community concern about the negotiations for a new site now. They have the best site and you gave it away and cost this Territory $3m. Do not avoid the truth of the matter.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (6.25): Mr Speaker, I will be brief. You have to admire Mr Berry when in the face of all the overwhelming evidence he can still talk such absolute rubbish. The Chief Minister has just read a document that made it quite clear that under Labor's stewardship of this issue it was agreed that the hospice was a temporary facility, a five-year facility. We can always go back to the Canberra Times editorial of Friday, the 29th - - -

Mr Stanhope: It was territory land.

MR SMYTH: Mr Stanhope interjects that it was territory land, but what he fails to acknowledge is that it was designated land under the control of the NCPA and that under the planning regime of the time - and it still exists - the NCPA had control of the planning guidelines over that area. You should learn about planning before you interject that it was territory land. It is all territory land, but some of it is under the control of the Federal Government.

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