Page 45 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2010

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hospital—a new private hospital for the north side of Canberra. I cannot understand why you guys do not support that.

MS PORTER: Mr Speaker, a supplementary.

MR SPEAKER: Yes.

MS PORTER: Minister, what are your future plans for Calvary hospital now that negotiations on this proposal have ceased?

MS GALLAGHER: I thank Ms Porter for the question. The Chief Minister and I met with the chair of the board of the Little Company of Mary on Saturday morning.

Mrs Dunne: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: could I ask you to reflect on whether Ms Porter’s question is in order, given the nature of the original question was about compulsory acquisition.

Ms Porter: It is about our options.

Mr Hanson: No, it was not. It was specifically about reconciling completely diametrically opposed statements about compulsory acquisition. It has nothing to do with the future plans.

MS GALLAGHER: So you’re not interested. You don’t care because you don’t want a public hospital on the north side of Canberra.

Mrs Dunne: We want Mary to ask questions that are in order.

MS GALLAGHER: We notice it does not feature too largely in Jeremy’s discussion paper. Thirty per cent of our public health system, you just forgot that.

MR SPEAKER: Order! You will have your chance, Ms Gallagher. There is no point of order, Mrs Dunne. I think the first question invited Ms Gallagher to talk about a range of options and the supplementary question related to that range of options.

MS GALLAGHER: Thank you, Mr Speaker. I cannot for the life of me think why the opposition would not be interested in the way forward on how we invest $200 million on a north side hospital, but there you go. The Chief Minister and I met with the chair of the board of the Little Company of Mary on Saturday morning. It was a very cordial meeting. I think relations between the government and LCM are very strong. We committed to continue to work together. The chair of the board and, indeed, other board members expressed their frustration.

The letter from Mr Brennan to the government, which I received on Saturday, indicated the board still maintains the view that the proposal was the best way forward in terms of delivering the outcomes we wanted, which were a new, reinvigorated public hospital on the north side of Canberra, a new private hospital on the north side of Canberra and increased investment in palliative care services in the ACT. They were the three outcomes, I think, that both parties had been working on.


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