Page 4962 - Week 13 - Thursday, 12 November 2009

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a very interesting precedent for the future for each of us in relation to supplementary questions. I am more than happy, Ms Hunter, to take your question on climate change, as it relates to Crace, on notice.

Hospitals—Clare Holland House

MR HANSON: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, can you advise who first put forward the proposal to transfer ownership of Clare Holland House to the Little Company of Mary? Was it the government or the Little Company of Mary?

MR STANHOPE: I do not have a time line in relation to that but it was in the context of this important issue, an issue that is very important to the future of public healthcare delivery in the ACT. There is no more important issue for the people of Canberra or indeed for government in the context of the overarching, fundamental importance of health, healthcare delivery and our capacity to maintain a system that meets the needs of the people of the ACT, and the government has a vision for achieving that and it is a vision which is essentially based on a $1 billion commitment to an upgrade of infrastructure within our health system within the ACT. It is a vision that requires, for us to meet what we would hope to achieve, somewhere in the order of a $200 million investment in Calvary hospital.

As we look at how we can continue to improve and manage the public health needs of people in the ACT, of course we have focused on the role that the Calvary hospital plays, and the government entered into negotiations with the Little Company of Mary. They are discussions or negotiations that have been held at different times over the last four to five, or even more, years. But in the context of these most recent negotiations or discussions I cannot say, because I was not there—it may be that the Minister for Health was not there, but certainly her officials would have been—at the table at which the issue was first raised. I am not able to say; I am not sure whether it is a matter that is recorded.

Mr Seselja: Are you going to take it on notice?

MR HANSON: Will you take that on notice, Chief Minister?

MR STANHOPE: I am more than happy to take it on notice, to see who it was around the table or in correspondence who first said, “And, by the way, we would like to discuss”—that is the Little Company of Mary—“our continued commitment to the provision of public palliative services for the people of the ACT and we believe our capacity as pre-eminent providers of palliative care would be assisted in terms of a long-term guarantee of service if we owned Clare Holland House as the providers of palliative care services through Clare Holland House for the people of the ACT.” I do not know who first raised it.

But let me say that the ACT government has been more than happy to engage with the Little Company of Mary in a conversation around that possibility. Indeed, as members of this place know and as the community know, the ACT government has been more than happy to entertain the proposal that the Little Company of Mary purchase the building, the infrastructure, Clare Holland House, just as the Little Company of Mary


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