Page 5533 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
MR SPEAKER: Members, please do not intervene or interject when questions are being asked because it wastes time to have the questions re-asked. Ms Le Couteur, could you repeat yourself?
MS LE COUTEUR: Certainly, Mr Speaker. My question is to the minister for TAMS and concerns the proposed southern cemetery site. I refer to the budget pressures affecting the ACT Public Cemeteries Authority as reported in the Canberra Times and heard about in the annual report hearings. These revealed that the cemeteries authority is struggling to pay long-term costs and that it has concerns about its long-term viability without raising extra funds. Can you tell the Assembly how these cost pressures are impacting on the decision as to the type of cemetery to be built at the proposed southern cemetery site?
MR STANHOPE: I thank Ms Le Couteur for the question. It is an important question. The issue that Ms Le Couteur raises is around a long-term liability which the cemeteries trust acknowledges most particularly in relation to its obligations going forward. It has accepted an obligation of perpetual care—
Mr Hargreaves: Or liability.
MR STANHOPE: Or perpetual liability in relation to the maintenance of existing graves within our cemeteries and, indeed, with all new burials. It is a commitment or obligation that the cemeteries trust accepts. The nature of the shortfall that has been identified, Ms Le Couteur, has to be understood in the context of those perpetual liabilities going forward.
The cemeteries trust, on the modelling that it has done in terms of anticipated expenditure going forward, does identify a significant shortfall in its capacity to continue to maintain the cemeteries, the graves, that currently exist into the future. Indeed, it is a perpetual obligation that is accepted by our cemeteries in relation to the nature of the contractual arrangement with those that utilise most particularly burial as opposed to cremation.
As to the point of your question, Ms Le Couteur, it suggests that a consideration in relation to the establishment of a third cemetery or a southern cemetery in some way involves a consideration of the costs and the benefits or the capacity there would be to establish an additional cemetery for dealing with that perpetual liability. I think it would be fair to say that the primary driver in relation to a third cemetery is, in fact, essentially the way that the cemetery will be full within a few years.
Whilst Gungahlin has significant capacity, it is in the north of the city. I believe, and the cemeteries trust believes, that we should maintain a second cemetery in the southern areas of Canberra, and that is the major driver. The one point I would say, Ms Le Couteur, that goes directly to your question is that there has been some consideration given to how the cemeteries trust might expand its revenue base.
One of the issues in relation to that is if it were to own and operate a crematorium. Cost-benefit analyses have been done around that but at this stage no decision has
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video