Page 2719 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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are changes, if there are delays, those delays quite often are outside the control of many individuals. If there are delays, we will be up-front about those delays and why those delays occurred.
This is a very, very large project. It is complex. It is about rebuilding a hospital in relation to this site whilst we maintain 24 hours a day, seven days a week operations. That is very, very complex and difficult to deliver. But what the Canberra community can expect and will get, and why they do trust me, Mr Hanson—even though it irritates you enormously—is that when there are changes, when there are delays, we will tell them, and we will tell them why.
MR HANSON: Supplementary, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Hanson.
MR HANSON: At the opening on 23 March it was stated that the PSU was grossly inadequate to treat people with mental illness. Given the gross inadequacies of the PSU, how do you justify the delays in constructing this facility?
MS GALLAGHER: It was grossly inadequate, and it was a legacy of, I think, Mr Smyth’s last time in government as well that nothing was done about the state of the psychiatric unit.
We had been planning the new adult mental health unit. We made some commitments around that and then, based on consumer feedback about not wanting to have the secure unit located on the same site as the adult mental health unit, we changed that. We revised that. We rescoped; we redesigned. We have built a state-of-the-art facility so that governments—I will not say of all political persuasions, because I do not see any reason why there would be a change—in the future will have a very good adult mental health unit.
Mr Hanson, you should be congratulating that—that society’s most vulnerable have a mental health unit that is second to none in the country. That is what we have got. And we have got people coming and visiting here to look at these facilities. Yes, it took some time to get here, but we are not about trying to shorten a process for some political expediency. We are about building infrastructure for the long term, infrastructure for the economic benefit and social benefit of this city. At times, that means that you look at the original plans and you revise them. That is what we have done with the adult mental health unit, and it has been to the project’s benefit.
MS PORTER: A supplementary.
MR SPEAKER: Yes, Ms Porter.
MS PORTER: Minister, has there been community feedback about the new facility? I am particularly interested in the visitors to the centre and the feedback you have had from them.
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