Page 3348 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 17 August 2010
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over the next 10 years. It is her vision, her program, her energy and her foresight that is delivering the most comprehensive improvement in public health in terms of infrastructure and services that has ever been delivered in this territory.
Part and parcel of the plan requires significant investment in our second hospital—and how best to achieve that? How can we afford it? How do we achieve it? The basis of all of the advice that the minister received in relation to that was that we needed to determine a capacity to overcome the issue that has affected every budget since self-government—namely, that every capital investment in Calvary public since 1989 has hit our bottom line.
We note the ambiguity in the Liberal Party’s position today. In every year in government, as they accounted for expenditure of Calvary hospital, it hit their bottom line. They applied the accounting system of the day and the expenditure hit the territory’s bottom line—not that they spent much, not that they invested much in health. They did not have to because they were busily cutting beds and reducing service. This minister has not. The Liberals did not spend much but what they did spend hit the bottom line.
We were faced with the need to spend somewhere in the order of $200 million on that second campus. Of course, in order to facilitate that expenditure we needed to deal with the issue of capacity and the accounting standard—the accounting standard that has applied since 1989 and, indeed, to this day has required that that money be accounted for on the bottom line. That, of course, was a major issue, an issue we sought to overcome.
Mr Smyth: So Tony Harris was wrong?
MR STANHOPE: They were not wrong; nor were we. It is not a question of right or wrong. Things have changed. When a fact changes you do not say, “Well, we were wrong.” We were not wrong; we were right.
Mr Smyth: You are just discarding the advice.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, you will have your opportunity, I am sure.
MR STANHOPE: There has been a change or a mooted change of the accounting standard. Nobody was wrong and nobody was necessarily right. We were responding to the facts as they pertained at the time—the facts being, of course, the relevant accounting standard. The relevant accounting standard has now changed, or is in the process of changing. So you say, “Well, they were right.” At the time, in fact, relevant to the accounting standard, we were proceeding appropriately. We were proceeding on the basis of advice from the Treasury and on the basis of advice from the department of health. We were entirely and absolutely right.
Mr Smyth: No, you were negligent for not looking at alternatives.
MR STANHOPE: Negligent? We were right. The accounting standard, in the context of our capacity to invest, was right. That is the situation. What has happened is that the accounting standard is in the process of changing.
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