Page 3957 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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people of the ACT believe that we would be purchasing bricks and mortar. In fact, they have not actually thought about that, because that is not the case. What the case is that it goes to the notion of property as covered by the self-government act. The actual arrangement and the expectation to operate, under licence or any other arrangement, a business over an extended period of, say, 100 years or 60 years or something like that is regarded as property.
That is where the value of the $77 million was placed. It was not that the gardens and the plant room and the wheelie bins all add up to $77 million—not at all. The self-government act says you cannot take away a property without due and proper compensation. Those opposite should have a look at the self-government act and they will see it standing up there like that. Mr Speaker, they actually got it wrong. Again, Mr Hanson has got it wrong. But because he has this need to be wanted and respected by those people outside, he has to create this state of fear. So he says, “Okay then, those opposite are doing the wrong thing. They’re wasting all of our money.”
But what actually happened? What happened was that the accounting standards were changed, and that changed the whole notion of the amount of compensation which needed to be paid. What was the responsible thing to do? These guys would have said, “We wouldn’t have changed things,” and I heard Mr Seselja say that. “We would not have changed our position.” I can tell you, Mr Speaker, if the accounting standards change and you do not change your position, that is being irresponsible in the extreme.
Mr Seselja: Our position was right in the first place. We didn’t need to change it.
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Seselja says across the chamber, “Especially if we were right in the first place.” Well, he was not right in the first place, because if he was right in the first place the accounting standards would not have needed to have been changed. As it turns out, they were changed. Of course, all of these negotiations keep going, and what happens? This minister looks at the accounting standards that have changed and has the feeling that something is about to go wrong and stops the whole lot in its tracks. In my humble opinion, that is the absolutely spot-on right thing to have actually occurred. There is absolutely nothing more one could have expected.
We talk about having to hand over $77 million in compensation for the loss of the right to operate a hospital on that site. The accounting standards changed, and there is no need to make that compensation payment. So this minister says, “Call it all off. We’ll go back to the drawing board. Call it all off. We don’t not need to do this,” and then she comes up with a way we can go forward in the provision of public hospital services to northern Canberra in a way where the infrastructure can be improved, can be added to, at no loss to the balance sheet of this territory, at no loss in the standard of service provided in that hospital and with a continuation of the relationship.
As far as I am concerned, there has been no loss in this whole sorry affair, except in the credibility of those people opposite. You know that they are on shaky ground, because every time the subject comes up Mr Hanson’s voice goes up three or four octaves, Mr Seselja’s voice goes up three or four notches in volume, and Mrs Dunne sits there and shrills away in the background trying to get her little interjections through without being noticed by your good self, Mr Speaker.
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