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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 3 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 610 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That the Assembly takes note of the papers.

Debate (on motion by Mr Quinlan ) adjourned to the next sitting.

2000-2001 capital works program-September quarter progress report

Paper and statement by minister

MR HUMPHRIES (Chief Minister, Minister for Community Affairs and Treasurer) (4.03): For the information of the members, I present the following paper:

I ask for leave to make a statement.

Leave granted.

MR HUMPHRIES: This is the second progress report for the current financial year's program. The report provides quarterly and full-year expenditure information on all programs included in the 2000-01 capital works program. It also includes deferred and unspent financing from previous years at individual project level.

Territory departments incurred expenditure on capital works of $21.898 million in the December quarter. This takes the year-to-date expenditure to $31.979 million, which represents 38.9 per cent of the original annual budget.

Two major projects-the Belconnen pool and the Woden joint emergency services centre-have experienced delays in construction commencement. Design work on the joint emergency services centre is now complete, after taking into consideration all the stakeholders' requirements, and the tenders have now been called. However, the full forecast expenditure is not expected to be incurred in the current year.

Similarly, the forecast expenditure on the pool project is not expected to be incurred in the current year, pending finalisation of the tender process, which of course is the appropriate way to do it. The government has partly addressed this through project advancement and substitution of projects from the supplementary program and project acceleration within the current year's program. Where project substitution or acceleration has not been possible, the remaining unspent amount will be deferred to 2001-02. Details of the variations are outlined in the report.

In terms of expenditure, the Department of Health and Community Care was the largest contributor to the capital works program expenditure in the second quarter, with $7.948 million expenditure. This takes the year-to-date expenditure to $13.548 million for the department, or 49 per cent of funds available for expenditure.

Major projects contributing to this expenditure included the stage 2 refurbishment of non-in-patient administrative areas ($2.053 million), replanning non-in-patient clinical areas ($1.310 million) at Calvary Hospital, the refurbishment of the psychiatric

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