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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1123 ..

MR MOORE: No, I do not. Yes, I am aware that the head of the department has done a review of the COOOL houses of Macquarie, and I am also aware that the agreed way of reviewing that issue was for the head of the Department of Health and Community Care to do it. But, instead, at my request, we also asked somebody from the Chief Minister's Department to join him in that review. There were some criticisms of the process. I might remind members that this was a very new process. In a tender-style process the department was trying to do its best to give CHOM an opportunity to be able to meet the criteria.

The most important thing identified in Mr Butt's draft review, to which CHOM responded, was our commitment to duty of care - not duty of care to some or a majority of residents at Macquarie but duty of care to each and every one of them. While that remains the responsibility of the department and while that remains my responsibility, we will continue to look at that as the overriding factor.

MR STANHOPE: I ask a supplementary question. Mr Speaker, can the Minister explain to the Assembly why he and his department have paid no heed to the report the Government commissioned from Dr Anthony Shaddock on the COOOL project, which recommended in favour of self-management?

MR MOORE: I thank Mr Stanhope for that supplementary. In a letter to the chief executive officer of the Department of Health and Community Care, CHOM claimed that the disability program does not meet disability service standards and referred to Dr Shaddock's report on future arrangements for service delivery. There have been a number of occasions when the report by Mr Shaddock has been misrepresented. This certainly applied to the issue of the disability program meeting disability service standards.

Dr Shaddock's report said that we should work towards self-determination. It is not that the department or I am reluctant to do that. We have a track record on it. The Fisher house has gone to that model. There are specific problems with this particular arrangement in place that would mean that, if we handed it over, we would not be taking seriously our duty of care to each and every one of the residents. Once again, duty of care is the overriding factor.

MR QUINLAN: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Treasurer. I would like to quote from the Federal goods and services tax Act, quite a large Act which says, amongst other things: