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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 2012 ..
MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I have to say that we have regularly made commitments to this Assembly and to the people of Canberra that we will do everything in our power to ensure that we are year 2000 compliant and I would expect the same of all of the people with whom we deal.
Ms Tucker: The point of the question, please.
MR SPEAKER: Order! You have asked your question.
MS CARNELL: I would expect the same of everyone with whom we deal. I believe that people who provide services with taxpayers' money have lots of responsibilities, as we as a government have responsibilities to do everything in our power to ensure that we are Y2K ready.
MS TUCKER: I have a supplementary question. The point of the question was the contractual nature of the agreement, but you have decided not to answer that. In some versions of the service purchasing contract the purchaser claims ownership of all assets over 2000. Therefore, will the purchaser take responsibility for those providers for year 2000 compliance?
MS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, it would be wrong for me to give an opinion on a contract in this particular situation. It is just impossible for me to do so.
MR BERRY: My question is to the Minister for Health and Community Care. On Monday, in trying to explain why the hospice would have to be moved from Acton Peninsula at a cost of $4m to ACT taxpayers, the Minister said:
The biggest stumbling block as far as I was concerned was the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Institute and the Commonwealth had made it very clear to us, the Prime Minister in particular in the last short while, that they would not be able to get the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Institute onto the Acton Peninsula as part of the museum development program while the hospice was there.
The Minister went on to say in another untrue and glib statement:
Well as you would probably be aware that Aboriginal people have a very specific view about places of death and certainly I know when I have been travelling across deserts in Australia for example, where somebody's died, whole groups of people moving away from the site and so they go through what I suppose I would describe as a purification process and that's something that was causing us, er, causing the Commonwealth a major problem and in the end they weren't going to move.
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