Page 3776 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 8 November 1994
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Acton Peninsula - Hospice
MR DE DOMENICO: Madam Speaker, my question without notice is directed to the Minister for Health. Minister, in answer to a question on notice in August 1993, your predecessor, the then Minister for Health, Mr Berry, advised that the projected annual running costs of the hospice on Acton Peninsula were $2m. I ask the current Minister: How then can you explain your comments, in the Canberra Times of 23 June this year, that the projected annual running costs of the hospice would be $1.45m? Why has the Government allocated only $1.48m in the 1994-95 budget, when less than 12 months ago Mr Berry stated, in answer to a question on notice, that it would cost $2m to run the facility?
MR CONNOLLY: Madam Speaker, going back to the original question that Mrs Carnell asked: The running of the hospice is subject to a tender process. There are tender bids in at the moment. They have been subjected to an independent arm's length process, and the Government will be making a full report in due course.
I would say - as I said after your pathetic performance in the last sitting week, when you carried on at length all day, every day, in question time and then for an extraordinarily long period on a censure motion on bed numbers, in respect of which you could not get even one Independent to support you, and you made utter fools of yourselves - that my practice, in answering questions in relation to dollars or numbers, has inevitably been to provide, both publicly and to the Assembly, the advice that I am given by the department. The advice that I was given by the department was that, on the premises that we were operating on, that was the figure that we were looking at. That is the figure that has been budgeted for. As I say, we have gone to a tender process. There were certain assumptions in that in relation to certain offsets; but the full information, as I said in answer to the first question, will be given, as it always is, very openly by this Government when the tender process is completed.
MR DE DOMENICO: I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Mr Berry advised the Assembly, in answer to a question on notice, that the costs of the building works for the hospice on Acton Peninsula amounted to $2.4m. We now know that the costs will be nearly $3.4m, or almost $1m or 33 per cent higher in just 12 months. Minister, how can you explain this blow-out in the costs?
Mr Lamont: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. A supplementary question is generally on a matter pertaining to the first question asked. That is a completely new matter that has been introduced.
Mrs Carnell: You live by the sword, and you die by it.
Mr De Domenico: It is about the hospice, and it is the same question.
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