Page 3553 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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MS BERRY: I am just trying to recall what the question was about. Do you know, Mr Wall?
Mr Wall: It related to designated priority enrolment areas for students attending Southern Cross Early Childhood School and other matters.
MS BERRY: Yes, I have. I am pretty sure I signed that yesterday. It is going through the system to your office.
Hospitals—infrastructure
Debate resumed.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (3.01): I am glad to stand in support of Mrs Dunne’s motion today. I acknowledge the outstanding work of our health professionals in our hospital, despite the crumbling and aged infrastructure that this government expects them to work in. We just cannot trust this government when it comes to our health infrastructure. For example, as we have discussed in this place and has been discussed in other places, the government wanted to close the hydrotherapy pool at the Canberra Hospital, as if it was news to them that it was ageing infrastructure. It would have closed on 30 June this year if not for the intense political pressure brought here in the Assembly, including by my colleagues Mrs Dunne and Mrs Jones. We have also spoken about the electrical switchboards, previously identified as high risk, which then experienced a fire, the cost of replacement of which has now blown out from $14 million to just under $51 million.
But more than that, I address the fairy tale which has been the story of the SPIRE project so far. Before the last election, on this side we worked hard to present to the people of Canberra a comprehensive, a real, a well-costed plan to address the government’s neglect of our major hospital, and we presented a plan that would have by now had a major expansion of the Canberra Hospital well progressed. That was a plan over three stages that would have brought the Canberra Hospital up to a modern 21st century standard and beyond. It would have addressed the issues of beds in corridors, ambulance bypass and crowded wards.
Instead, what we got was a plan conjured up on the back of an envelope to build a fictitious building which they dubbed, in a rush, the SPIRE. And like Brigadoon, the imaginary idyllic place so remote from reality, this imaginary Brigadoon hospital was going to be built on the site of the helipad car park at the far end of the hospital campus. This government’s poorly conceived 2016 SPIRE would never be built, and of course has now been abandoned. This plan for SPIRE offered to the people of Canberra was just another mirage.
We now know there was no planning done for that election promise, for the 2016 SPIRE. Now, with some planning, the 2019 SPIRE expansion of the Canberra Hospital is a new promise on a new site. But when will it be built? We have seen in the incoming minister’s brief that the new plan will have a decanting of existing buildings to commence this year, with construction to be completed in 2023-24.
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