Page 4714 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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community reference group. As with all our projects, that will be an important part of the two-way engagement with the local community about how we design and build our new emergency, surgical and critical care capability at Canberra Hospital, the biggest investment in new health infrastructure since self-government.
This is a very important project for the whole of Canberra but also, I recognise, an important project for the local community. We are already committed to engaging in genuine consultation with the local community in relation to the hospital precinct, the master plan and the development of the SPIRE project. We will continue with that engagement in good faith.
Madam Speaker, I seek your guidance, and maybe that of the Clerk, in relation to the referral of this matter. When the Clerk announced this, he indicated that it would be referred to the planning committee. Others have made an assumption that it would be referred to health and community services. I seek clarification in relation to which committee this petition is intended to be referred to, given that I intend to be the minister responding to the petition, given that it relates to the SPIRE project specifically.
MADAM SPEAKER: I will seek some advice and clarify that by the end of the day.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (10.15): I commend Mrs Dunne for bringing this forward today and tabling the petition. I echo her words; they are very important. I also recognise the extensive work that Mrs Dunne has been doing in her portfolio. And I welcome the members of the Garran community who are here today.
Mrs Dunne outlined some of the history. I will reiterate some of those points but go further.
The origins for the redevelopment of the Canberra Hospital came in 2008 with the capital asset development plan. It was a plan from the Labor Party to rebuild Canberra’s ageing health infrastructure, particularly the Canberra Hospital. We had particular concerns with some aspects of it but, by and large, it was a bipartisan approach.
In 2010 we had a committee inquiry which I participated in. Out of that arose a plan from the Labor Party for a long-term plan for Canberra’s health infrastructure. That was the origin of the University of Canberra Hospital, and the decision was then made by the Labor government to rebuild the Canberra Hospital. The decision was to put $800 million towards that. The first stage was going to be $375 million. In 2011, $41 million was put in the budget to proceed with that program.
Then there was an election and things changed. I do not know what went on behind the scenes with the Labor Party and the Greens, and decisions about a tram, but things changed. In the 2012 budget, the government took out of the budget that $41 million to start the process of redeveloping the Canberra Hospital, for stage 1 of the redevelopment. All the work that had been done got shelved; the $375 million went to the tram, and that project was put on ice.
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