Page 2685 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 10 August 2016
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costs. In the end the community is paying mightily for the generators. As soon as I was advised on the noise issues—in fact, on the same day—I wrote to the Minister for Health urging him to take positive and swift action to deal with these noise issues.
My staff gave one of the minister’s advisers a heads-up phone call to say the letter was on its way and then hand delivered the letter to his office. That was on Friday, 10 June. Nearly nine weeks later I am still waiting for a response. I should hate to think that this Minister for Health’s failure even to acknowledge the receipt of my letter is an indication of his attention to or concern for this matter. I would hate to think this Minister for Health holds the health and wellbeing of our ageing residents in such disdain. I would hate to think this Minister for Health has taken his eye off the ball when it comes to the planning of a major infrastructure project.
He has form in this with his past history with projects like the GDE and the Alexander Maconochie Centre. He no longer has responsibility for delivering on his latest pet project, light rail, and he will not be here to take responsibility for the delivery of this hospital. The Labor-Greens coalition has failed in so many ways and it has failed on the delivery of infrastructure projects to be on time and on budget. It has failed to maintain the amenity and the quiet enjoyment of the residents of Kangara Waters.
I do raise the question why it is that we have to use generators and incur the cost of running three large generators, I think, day and night for an extended period of time. We are now months into the project and those generators run day and night to provide power to the site because there is no substation.
That seems to me to have been the responsibility of the University of Canberra who has put off, it seems, building the substation that is necessary for that part of their development site, thereby foisting on the ACT public the cost of running generators which impinge considerably on the amenity of the people who live at Kangara Waters, and there is no end in sight.
They do not know, I do not know—no-one is able to tell us—when the substation will be built and when the generators will be turned off. This is an important issue that this minister has failed comprehensively to address in any way. I put questions on notice and I have done a range of things but I have not got a satisfactory answer about who is responsible for the decision not to install a substation early in the piece, who is responsible for making the decision about when the substation will be installed and why the ACT taxpayer is bearing the cost through the project of running three generators 24-7 for months at a time. I would be very interested to hear the minister’s response on this question.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Attorney-General, Minister for Health, Minister for Police and Emergency Services and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change) (8.08): It is good to be here this evening to speak about the government’s continued investment of health as part of this year’s budget. At $1.6 billion over the next four years this is a record level of investment and almost a third of the entire ACT budget appropriation. It not only demonstrates the importance the government places on maintaining investment in our public health system but also the commitment to providing even better health services for our community.
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