Page 3515 - Week 08 - Thursday, 23 August 2012
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I also, unfortunately, have to pay my respects to Professor Marjan Kljakovic, who was Professor of General Practice at ANU Medical School and Director of the Academic Unit of General Practice within the ACT Health Directorate. He passed away on 14 August in St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, having suffered a devastating heart attack 16 days earlier. I extend my sincere condolences to his partner, Sarah, to Marian, Tomas and Moja Kljakovic and to Marko and all his family and many friends.
Marjan came to Canberra to take up the professor of general practice role in 2005 with a long history of balancing academic work with clinical general practice. His research interests were in the area of health informatics, evidence-based medicine and the philosophy of medicine. He quickly established a reputation in Australia as an enthusiastic GP who promoted the role of the expert generalist broadly and sincerely. He was instrumental in the establishment of PracNET, the ACT and southern New South Wales general practice research network, which is highly regarded around the country as illustrative of how GPs can cooperate to produce quality, clinically relevant primary care research. He promoted the ACT and region as a model of how teaching and research activities can be integrated into a GP setting. He advocated for the importance of the role of GP supervisors to promote the best GP education for our medical students and junior doctors.
He lived life to the full. He loved his work and loved to engage in debate and discussion. He was proud of his Kiwi roots and cheered for the All Blacks. He had a booming voice and a larger than life presence, which were matched by a wonderful capacity to laugh at himself. He will be greatly missed—another local health professional who passed away unexpectedly and well before his time. (Time expired.)
Planning—Chisholm
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Gaming and Racing) (11.58): I rise just to make a few brief comments on this evening’s interesting discussion we had. Just before we moved to the adjournment debate, we had some discussions with Mr Seselja on what is referred to as Chisholm park, a block of land on the corner of Heagney and Deamer crescents. Mr Seselja and the Canberra Liberals, and Mr Smyth in particular, take great pride on saving this block of land and retaining it as an open space for the community.
But let us be very clear here. It was the Canberra Liberals, under the penmanship of Brendan Smyth and his colleagues when they were in government, that actually took that land from the community, designated it and put it on the residential land release program. His view was that there should be a mix of residences and shops on that land. Far from Mr Smyth saving a block of open space for the Chisholm community, Mr Smyth should be damned for actually bringing that open space onto the land release program at the beginning. I find it quite extraordinary that Mr Smyth, in this place, in his aspirations to get on this side of the chamber, is actually unpicking the work that he did the last time he had the privilege of, and the Canberra community had the disservice of, being on this side of the fence.
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