Page 1601 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 12 May 2015
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What did people say about this? Everybody thought that it was 200 beds. Mr John Watkins, a former Labor Deputy Premier of New South Wales and the Chair of Little Company of Mary Health Care, said he had been written to by the government. He said: “We agree in principle to what they’ve proposed and now we just have a few details to tidy up.” The Little Company of Mary stated:
Funding for the deal will be announced in the ACT Budget … providing several hundred million dollars for a 200 bed upgrade to Calvary and the building of a new 200 bed sub-acute hospital somewhere in the city’s north.
So that is what the Little Company of Mary thought. What did Ms Gallagher say? What was Ms Gallagher saying about this when I asked her about it? This is from Hansard in 2011:
Ms Gallagher: Yes, non-acute; so it is subacute and it may have a few little other things with it.
Mr HANSON: And that is still in the ballpark of 200 beds?
Ms Gallagher: Yes.
“Yes,” she said. The Canberra Times, in repeated reporting, said:
Ms Gallagher said the Bruce site had topped the list on a number of criteria to house the hospital which is planned to have … 200 beds.
An ABC news story stated that “the hospital would include 200 beds for subacute treatment”. Mr Grant Carey-Ide, the executive director, service and capital planning for this government, was the man in the Health Directorate charged with building hospitals. He was the bloke who was responsible for that. And what did he say? He said: “It is proposed that it will have up to 200 beds.”
Who else have we heard from? Look at this one. This is interesting. This is the newsletter that comes out, Our City, Our Community. It is a lovely document, Madam Deputy Speaker, and it has a very nice picture of the former Chief Minister on it, and a message from her. It has lots of information about things. It refers to “expanding health and hospital services in the ACT”. It states:
The new University of Canberra Public Hospital will provide up to 200 beds for sub-acute services …
So even the government is saying it in their newsletters—or was that a lie? Is that not true? Was that a deliberate attempt to mislead the population? Madam Deputy Speaker, when you spoke in the Assembly in 2014, just last year, and you said that it was going to have 200 beds, you were not misleading the Assembly, were you? Back then I am sure that you were telling the truth. Madam Deputy Speaker, you said:
That is why the building of the University of Canberra public hospital is very important to the people of the ACT and is keenly awaited by the people of Ginninderra—
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