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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 9 Hansard (31 August) . . Page.. 2581 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

As a result the Territory is going to be hit with another $3m to replace the hospice. I accept that governments change and ideas change in relation to the placement of particular buildings. Mrs Carnell wants the hospice somewhere else. She does not want it on the Acton site. I cannot predict what Mrs Carnell might want or might not want from one day to the next, but I am absolutely sure about the hospice. She has always been negative to the hospice on the Acton site, because it was a good idea and one that was supported by the community. It was a decision made in the context of health-related facilities staying on that site, a decision which the majority of members of this Assembly supported at the time.

If governments change and they want to put it somewhere else, that is up to them, but they have to pay the price of the extra funding to do it. If the Commonwealth wanted it moved, they should have paid the compensation - there is no doubt about that - and the Government should have secured it. But it is no good Mrs Carnell coming in here and trying to re-create history in relation to the hospice. The paper trail we have uncovered shows that she is the one that is culpable in relation to this matter. She is the one who either recklessly or deliberately wasted another $3m of the Territory's money and caused a great deal of upset to the hospice community, who have been fighting for many years for better services for those who might use the hospice.

Mr Speaker, I come back to the fundamental issue which has given rise to this Bill, the supercar race. I wonder how long this debate has been going on behind the scenes and why the matter did not turn up in the budget debate. I have not heard an answer to that.

Mr Humphries: We did not know about it in the budget debate. That is why.

MR BERRY: Mrs Carnell acknowledged during debate that the discussions were going on well before the budget.

Ms Carnell: No, I did not say that. You asked when CTEC spoke to AVESCO.

MR BERRY: Before the budget. There were discussions going on before the budget. That is the point I make. I guess we will never get to the bottom of what depth these discussions were. It is quite clear from this Government's performance on economic management that the community is entitled to be nervous about the ability of the Government to manage these sorts of events. The Government has made this decision. We hope the event succeeds. If it fails, ACTEW will be faced again, I suspect, with the need to provide a bit more cash to prop up the Government's budget and financial management.

Mr Speaker, this Bill will pass the Assembly today. It is then, one assumes, up to those who are making the decision about whether this event should happen in Canberra. If they make the decision for it to happen in Canberra - they say they are going to do it this week - then I hope that whatever happens out in the streets is an event which brings good to the ACT, though there will be quite a number of people who will be unhappy about it. Those are decisions for the Government. It is appalling that people were not given the opportunity to make their views known. It is appalling that those people who

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