Page 4715 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019
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When we inquired into this, the response from the then health minister, Mr Corbell, was that the plan for the Labor Party was just to manage high-risk infrastructure. They were going to manage it for 10 years, basically in an ad hoc way as problems occurred, and put out spot fires. That was the language that they used: extreme risk management.
I do not resile from the fact that we then took what we thought was a good plan. We had worked on it collaboratively, in a sense, through that committee process, with a bipartisan view that this needed to be done. We said, “We will do this at the 2016 election.” We put that plan on the table. It had an enormous amount, millions of dollars, of work behind it, but it had been put on ice by the Labor Party.
What then happened was that through the course of the 2016 election, it became apparent to the Labor Party that this was something that was needed and was a political problem for them. There was a poll in the field. The poll obviously told the Labor Party that they needed to do something here because this is what the people of Canberra wanted.
On the eve of the election, they came out with something called the SPIRE, on a single A4 piece of paper. It did not have any of the research, the expert advice, the years of work and the millions of dollars of planning behind it; it was done over a weekend on a piece of A4 paper. As a result, we have a situation now where the Labor Party’s plan is a political fix. We see the consequences of that in that there is no physical work being commenced. When we look at who is actually working on it, it is not very many people. It is causing, or potentially will cause, massive disruption to the people of Garran.
There was an alternative, Madam Speaker, if the Canberra Liberals had won. It is my greatest single regret that the rebuild of the Canberra Hospital, which was the bipartisan position, did not get underway. If the Canberra Liberals had won, it would be well on its way. We would see that five-storey tower building mostly built, ready to be open in the short term. It would have provided the long-term health fix that this territory needs so desperately, rather than a political fix to solve an election problem for this Labor Party and the Greens.
MRS JONES (Murrumbidgee) (10.20): I have grave concerns that yet again the government have no intention of actually listening to the community. They claim that they are consulting, but they have already decided on the location of this building.
Gilmore Crescent and Palmer Street are already incredibly busy. The minister accepted and stated as much yesterday in the chamber. It is illogical to dig in and choose not to listen if the location is not the best location that it can be. No rationale has been given in this place or to the community as to why we have dug in and decided that this is the only place it can be. You should know better after so many times of having basically the same debate in this place over and over again. The Labor Party think they know better than the community what is good for them.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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