Page 3593 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 22 October 2013
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well as the biggest program of sporting events in Canberra’s history during our centenary year. We are cutting red tape, with the Deputy Chief Minister leading the work in reducing regulation in the business and community sector. We are supporting ACT businesses and local jobs by increasing the weighting given to local small and medium-sized businesses when they are tendering for ACT government contracts. No doubt Mr Hanson’s favourite would be the towards zero growth initiative, which is increasing healthy lifestyle choices across a range of areas, including schools, communities, workplaces and homes—an issue that I think will be one of the most important issues for government to support in the year ahead.
We have got the expanded Canberra Hospital emergency department open. The centenary chair for cancer research has been funded. Calvary are getting on with delivering the changes to the birth area of the hospital to allow the birth centre to deliver two state-of-the-art birthing rooms for women who are birthing at Calvary public hospital. We have got the specialised paediatric treatment space and waiting area within the Canberra Hospital ED, which will start work later this year—again a very important change at the Canberra Hospital designed to help children and their families through that difficult time when they present at our public hospital system.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Mr Smyth.
MR SMYTH: Minister, what is the projected capital cost and the recurrent operating cost of the city to the lake, the capital metro and the subacute hospital?
MS GALLAGHER: As Mr Smyth will know, all of those projects are at the early stage of their design and you will see the money that we have appropriated in the budget to progress those projects.
Mr Smyth: So you have got no idea what you are committed to.
MS GALLAGHER: No. What I am not going to do is give you a figure that you will then turn around and use if it changes as it goes through detailed design. The figure that I have been provided for the University of Canberra public hospital at the moment, for example, is significantly less than what you promised to fund it for in the last election campaign.
Mr Smyth: There you go! What is that figure?
MS GALLAGHER: No, I am not going to give it to you yet because it is not a final figure that has been through all of the work that needs to be done before I am confident it is a figure that will withstand budget scrutiny. That is what I am not going to do.
You will see the funding that has been allocated in the budget for those projects, the city to the lake, the capital metro and the University of Canberra public hospital. All of those have appropriations supported by this Assembly and, as further work is done and those costs are refined and decisions are taken, including about the staging—for example, the city to the lake project is not envisaged to be delivered in one year—we will provide that information to the Assembly in due course.
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