Page 4420 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

(2) without limiting the scope of the audit, the Auditor-General will examine:

(a) operation and compliance with the original and supplementary agreements between Little Company of Mary and government bodies;

(b) procedural fairness of any alterations proposed to these agreements;

(d) any evidence of:

(i) efficiencies that would be achieved by the proposal; and

(ii) enhanced health outcomes achieved by the proposal;

(e) the methodology, process and data used to value:

(i) Clare Holland House at $9 million; and

(ii) Calvary Public Hospital at $77 million;

(f) the timeframes and methodology used in the ACT Treasury’s Financial Analysis; and

(g) the validity of the data presented in the ACT Treasury’s Financial Analysis of the proposal; and

(3) the Auditor-General’s audit be presented to the Assembly no later than the first sitting day of 2010.

At the outset of this motion today I would like to make the opposition’s position on the government’s proposal crystal clear, and that is that we will be scrutinising every element of the deal. We will be engaging with the community and we will be making sure that whatever the outcome is it is in the best interests of the community. And what we will not be doing is being rushed into a decision, a pre-emptive forcing of our hands to say that we will either vote for or against, until we are satisfied that we have all of the information before us. I think that is an entirely reasonable and appropriate position to adopt by the opposition and indeed it would be negligent of us to do otherwise.

What I am asking us to do today is to refer elements of the proposal that have been put forward by the government to the Auditor-General for independent analysis as part of the scrutiny process. That is all that is being proposed here and I think that that is an entirely appropriate proposition. It is clear that we do not have all the detail, and that that detail has not been independently scrutinised thus far, and we are still in the consultation process, for what that is worth. So this is just part of that ongoing process.

A number of legitimate concerns have been raised by the community and by the opposition. We will get to them later throughout the course of debate on this motion, but I just highlight that concerns have been raised by groups such as the AMA, the Palliative Care Society, the Catholic Church, the Australian Nursing Federation, the

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .