Page 2351 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
The conclusion that I can draw from that is either that the minister is mistaken and her recollection is bad and she needs to correct her recollection or that she is a negligent minister who went to a cabinet meeting where the cabinet made a decision about the options in the business case and did not look at the report. Both of those things cannot be true at the same time. The minister needs to come in and make it clear what is the case. Was she a negligent minister in April last year and did not read the report and is it true that she only saw this report for the first time a couple of months ago?
Then she needs to answer the question: why is that the case? Why is it that this minister has not seen this report when the opposition has been asking for it, when Mr Hanson was asking for it last year, when Mr Coe has been asking for it, when I have been asking for it? Why is it that she had not seen this report and why is it that she was not briefed on this in her incoming minister’s brief? This work is a substantial amount of the capital works that need to be done at the Canberra Hospital.
All of the positions that the minister put forward are not credible. Some of them are wrong and she needs to, in this place, tell us what actually happened and when she first knew about this report. Quite frankly, I find it hard to believe her assertion on radio that she saw it only a couple of months ago and if she did see it only a couple of months ago there is a fundamental breakdown in the operation of the minister’s office where she is not sufficiently hands-on to know what is going on in her department in relation to the infrastructure.
This motion that I have brought forward today is a straightforward one which calls for accounting. It calls for the minister to come back in the September sitting and itemise the 147 extreme and high risk issues notified at the Canberra Hospital and outline to the Assembly what has happened with each one of those 147 items, what money is allocated to it and what is the timetable for the completion of works to rectify the 147 extreme and high risk issues. And it does need to be itemised for all of those.
This, as you can see, members, is an extensive report. Actually, there is another volume. I must have left it upstairs. It is an extensive report. It is more than 500 pages and it highlights a range of issues. I will dwell on just a few. I think I will dwell on the ones from the tower block because I think that the tower block is probably the oldest part of the infrastructure and some of the issues there are most significant.
The mechanical pumps are in poor condition. The report says that the units do not appear to be functional and are not in service, that they are likely to be at the end of their service life. The split system in the cooling nodes cannot cope with the ambient temperature, a temperature whose fix has been provided by ducting air from another system into the back of the unit. The mechanical distribution boards in some cases have loose panels or missing fittings. Many parts will be obsolete. Feed cables are no longer supported by current standards. The battery room is not fire rated. This is a compliance issue. I like this one: the yellow Detroit generator is inoperable and currently out of service. Supply cables of a temporary generator are not fire rated or adequately protected. The standby generator does not operate and needs replacing with a different standby generator.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video