Page 4712 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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It is an important issue for the people of Garran and surrounding areas in particular. I hope that the members for Murrumbidgee who are on that committee will take their constituency work seriously and look very seriously at the issues that arise in relation to the current location of SPIRE. It really is time for the government to admit that it got it wrong.
I know that that will be hard for the government to do, but it is a little perplexing that they are in a situation where one of their own suggested the right solution for this building and they have walked away from it. They have created a situation where everyone who is a close neighbour is unhappy and concerned about the location of a building that we all know is crucial to the health future of the people of the ACT. No-one is objecting to the building. They are objecting to the location, which is unsafe and fraught.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.08): Madam Speaker, I rise to speak on the SPIRE petitions. I know the Canberra Hospital precinct well, both as a former very close neighbour of it and also, unfortunately, as someone who has spent many hours at various hospital and health services in that precinct while supporting people close to me. Of course, the Greens and the community all support future expansion of health facilities in the precinct. SPIRE is what we are talking about right now, but with a growing population and an ageing population, we all know that there will be more. This growth in facilities will no doubt have an impact on local residents.
However, planning, design and consultation matter a lot in how big that impact is and how the community responds to each proposal. Planning work on the expansion of key facilities at the site has been going on for years. I assume that in fact there has been extensive consultation with medical stakeholders. However, to date clearly there has not been adequate consultation—really, hardly any at all—with the community. The local community is currently feeling alienated from the process.
For example, the March 2019 community consultation clearly did not notify people about the potential impacts of the new plan for SPIRE on Palmer Street and Gilmore Crescent. Local residents were just taken by surprise at the move of location. That has led to a significant amount of the current distress in the community. At this point I believe that it is critical for the health minister to provide a detailed explanation to the local community of the medical reasons, the real reasons, why the current SPIRE location has been chosen instead of the location publicised in 2016.
I am sure that there is some good reason. Please, share it with the community and they no doubt would be a lot more accepting of what presumably is the best outcome. But we do not know. It is also highly important for the government to listen to local feedback about traffic. This is a matter not just for local residents but also, of course, for patients and visitors. I am afraid that I know this personally. Driving someone to the emergency department is a very stressful and distressing experience. The driver is not going to be thinking about traffic at that point. There have to be clear, simple ways for accessing emergency.
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