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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Thursday, 11 March 2004) . . Page.. 1053 ..

Mrs Dunne: I rise on a point of order. Standing order 62 relates to relevance and tedious repetition. The minister’s comments have been made by him and the Chief Minister on at least two or three other occasions in the last sitting fortnight.

MR SPEAKER: The issue of tedious repetition goes to the debate at hand, not something that has happened in the past. In any event, if we got too heavy handed about tedious repetition in this place it would shorten the proceedings, I can tell you, by a long way and we would have to sit for fewer days. But so far as relevance is concerned, aged care facilities were raised in the context of this debate and I think the minister is entitled to address that.

Mrs Dunne: But Mr Speaker it is about reference of a particular proposal to the planning committee, not about the sort of—

MR SPEAKER: Sure. And without trying to enter into debate, I think you used the aged care issue as part of your argument for the reference.

MR CORBELL: Thank you Mr Speaker. Obviously Mrs Dunne does not like hearing what the government is doing in relation to ensuring aged accommodation projects.

Mrs Dunne: We’ve heard it before.

MR CORBELL: Well you will keep hearing it, Mrs Dunne, because it is the government strategy, it is a proactive approach, it is the establishment of a land bank, it is the alignment of Commonwealth bed allocation policies more closely linked with demand, and it is the development of a system of reform to improve processes overall.

For all of those reasons the government is not supportive of this proposal. But we have no difficulty in the matter being referred to the planning and environment committee. But I think the committee will find that the process issues are not things that they will be able to get much out of. I think they will find a fundamental difference of policy opinion between the proponent and the government. That happens all the time; there is nothing unusual about that. There is nothing wrong about that either. It just means that we disagree.

I do not know that members consider it a valuable use of a committee’s time if it spends all its time doing an investigation that ultimately finds that the proponent and the government disagree. But if a majority of members in this place feel that to be appropriate, the government has no difficulty with that.

The government has seen the amendment proposed by Ms Dundas. That raises a number of interesting points. I am happy to address that when she raises that in the debate.

MS DUNDAS (11.39): I will speak to Mrs Dunne’s motion before I move my amendment. The specific issue that Mrs Dunne has asked us to debate today is aged care facilities. It is a very important issue, specifically in the Belconnen and north Canberra area. A joint inquiry, possibly by the planning and the community services committees, to look at the provision and location of aged care facilities across Canberra would be a

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