Page 4569 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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... sell Jindalee, the Queen Elizabeth II nursing home and the Taj Mahal on Moore Street ... transfer ... the patients ... to the Royal Canberra Hospital community hospital ... place hospital management totally in the hands of hospital boards; eliminate imbalance between public and private beds by permitting private development of another hospital like John James on the north side ... transfer bureaucrats ... to ... the unused capacity of the ... Royal Canberra Hospital.
I said that this would achieve both capital gains and reduced operating costs simultaneously, yet "retain the Royal Canberra for future development".
That was a statement that I made in September last year. I did not need public servants to drive me, to use the words of the Leader of the Opposition. That is exactly what the Government is doing now. In fact, if I had written the script then for a policy for this Government, there it is. Yet the Leader of the Opposition says that we are driven by the bureaucracy in terms of hospital development and health - her words, not mine. It is another one of these efforts on the part of the Opposition to distort the truth, and this time she has shot herself in the foot because there are approximately 17,500 public servants out there who have taken as a slur the implication that she regards them as being so incompetent and unprofessional that they would attempt to determine the Government's policies for it.
Private Members' Bills
MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, I direct a question to the Chief Minister. Have you written to the Federal Government in accordance with the Speaker's request to ask for legal advice on section 65 of the self-government Act? And has the Government briefed the queen's counsel in accordance with the action it promised in the Assembly last week?
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, as at the time of leaving my office a few minutes ago, I had not received the request that you referred to; so the answer is, no, I have not yet written because I have not received your proposal. I repeat, Ms Follett, that I have not received the request from the Speaker. When I get it I will act upon it; but I am not clairvoyant and I am not going to act upon something until I have received it. Is that clear enough?
As to the second part of the question, that is a matter for the Attorney-General and I suggest that you ask the Attorney-General if you want an answer to it.
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