Page 3483 - Week 09 - Thursday, 21 August 2008
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is in place to meet future needs, reduce potential future costs and support the growth of the city.
Along with the normal annual capital works program, the government has committed around $1.5 billion to infrastructure in the 2008-09 budget. The program reflects priorities for the community and long-term investments in infrastructure that prepare the territory for the future.
Today’s matter of public importance provides the opportunity to again highlight key aspects of the building the future program—a program which has largely been funded by the strong surpluses that my government has delivered since it came to office. The higher than anticipated revenue growth over the last six budgets, coupled with prudent and necessary structural reforms to our expenditure, has allowed the territory to build a strong balance sheet that is the envy of other jurisdictions. This strong balance sheet position has allowed the government to deliver its five-year $1 billion building the future program without the need for any borrowings.
The government has wisely invested heavily in high-priority services and the territory’s infrastructure to expand the productive capacity of the economy, reduce future costs and support growth of the city. The government has invested wisely to establish a health system to serve the needs of the next decade, improve the transport system, meet the challenges of climate change, improve urban amenities, invest in public service infrastructure and provide for the growth of the city and its economy. These areas of infrastructure investment will provide direct benefits to Canberrans.
The government has allocated $300 million from the building the future program as the first tranche of investment to set up a health system for the next decade and beyond. We anticipate that that particular major investment in health will, before we are finished, involve investment of at least $1 billion over the next 10 years in health infrastructure.
Specific projects include a women’s and children’s hospital and a suite of mental health facilities, including a young persons unit, an adult acute in-patient unit, a secure adult unit, a mental health assessment unit, a surgical assessment and planning unit, a new neurosurgery operating theatre, an intensive-care high-dependency unit at Calvary Hospital, and a new community health centre in Gungahlin. Provision is also being made for planning, feasibility and forward design studies for the reconfiguration and the redevelopment of the health facilities in both hospitals and the community.
These are significant investments that will benefit many of us at some stage in our lives. These are investments to meet the health needs of the next decade and beyond and are structured, as a result of our health planning, to ensure we have that capacity to meet what we know will be a burgeoning surge or spike in demand as a result of the ageing of the baby boomers.
Contrast that planning for the future, that commitment of funds—$300 million in a first tranche, $1 billion over 10 years—with what we inherited: the closed beds, the 114 beds that the Liberal Party took out of the system. Contrast our plan, our vision for and our commitment to the healthcare needs of the people of Canberra by providing the necessary infrastructure to that of the Liberals. In their last term in
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