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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2232 ..

MR STANHOPE: I have a supplementary question. Minister, I know that it was a long question that I asked, but I wonder whether you might like to pick up the point that I asked about whether doctors will actually get more for performing surgery in the private hospitals than they would get in the public hospital, if that is all right.

Mr Moore: Yes, I will pick that up.

MR STANHOPE: My supplementary question is: can the minister tell the Assembly the extent of the bid from Canberra Hospital in the tendering process, which areas it was not successful in and why? Is the report in this morning's Canberra Times that the hospital had not decided whether it will take up the $200,000 offered by the government correct? If it is, what is the perceived problem?

MR MOORE: Let me answer first the part of the question that I missed last time. The reason I do not know and am unlikely to know what the doctors will get paid in a private capacity rather than in a public hospital is that a tender was put in by the hospitals and they, in turn, negotiated with the specialists, so I would not have any idea whether they get paid more. It was a tender that went to the hospitals themselves and that would then be a private arrangement within a private hospital. Such contracts are not a matter of our business, Mr Stanhope. If you wrote to the Perin hospital and the Canberra Eye Hospital for that information, they may give it to you. I doubt that they would. Indeed, I doubt very much that they would give it to me, and I am not asking for it.

Could you refresh my memory on the supplementary part of the question?

Mr Stanhope: Yes, how much did the Canberra Hospital bid?

MR MOORE: Sorry, the $200,000. I have to tell you that the first piece of information I have had on how much the Canberra Hospital bid was what was in the paper this morning, because this tender has been done totally at arms length from me. That having been said, there is no reason why I ought not know. Therefore, I will take that part of the question on notice.

MR QUINLAN: My question is to the Chief Minister. Yesterday you were good enough to confide in us in this place that the matter of the 1997-98 financing of the Bruce Stadium redevelopment and the overnight loan arrangement had been referred to cabinet. You also stated that the actual decision to expend funds was taken by a middle-level public servant whom, quite rightly, you did not name. Chief Minister, under what form of authority did the middle-level public servant make those payments and undertake a loan in such unusual circumstances, that is, an overnight loan?

MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I think that I answered this question fully yesterday. I made the point that cabinet has every right to expect that decisions it has made are conducted within the bounds of the Financial Management Act and other laws of the territory. Cabinet certainly made a decision on this issue and had a right to believe that the approach that was taken was in line with legislation.

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