Page 2907 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994

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MR LAMONT: Madam Speaker, as you would appreciate, I would never build an ugly toilet block, so I cannot answer the second part of the question. In relation to the matter of the dunny, I probably cannot give a complete answer but would bow to Mr De Domenico's better knowledge on these matters.

MR DE DOMENICO: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Minister, how could any toilet block possibly cost $100,000 - which, by the way, is the cost of a 20-square house?

MR LAMONT: Mr De Domenico, I am very happy to answer you. I appreciate your quoting verbatim the quote that Mr Cornwell took verbatim from a quote that I made.

Mr De Domenico: No, it was in the paper.

MR LAMONT: What you are saying is that you have a quote from a newspaper which records a discussion I had with - - -

Mr De Domenico: Did you say it or did you not say it?

MR LAMONT: If you stop your clatter and chatter and fratter, I will get onto the things that matter. Mr De Domenico, there was a proposal which said that a rest room facility, including change rooms and toilet, was required for that area. To do that would cost, as I was advised, about $100,000. That would be to ensure that it was of an appropriate design; that it was not a single dunny with two feet between the bottom of the door and the floor, with the moon cut in it and with white toilet paper rolls flying out the back of it. That would be aesthetically not acceptable, even to you. That was certainly not what was proposed for that oval. I stand by what I said to the Weston Creek Community Council, in very pleasant circumstances at an evening which your colleague Mr Cornwell attended. The information that I gave was in relation to the question that was asked.

Calvary Hospital - Paediatric Ward

MS ELLIS: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister for Health. I ask the Minister: Will the Government endorse Mrs Carnell's promise to establish a paediatric ward at Calvary Hospital?

MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, no, the Government will not - not because it is bad economics, which it is, but because it is bad medicine. The advice that we have consistently received, the advice that Mr Humphries received when he made the decision to have a single paediatric unit at Woden Valley Hospital, is that in a city of this size it would be very bad medicine to seek to duplicate paediatric services. Bear in mind, Ms Ellis, that in Sydney - a city which, on the last advice I received, is a little larger than Canberra, by a factor of about 20 - there are two units.


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