Page 1366 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
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around the head. These are people who have individual status and standing in this community. They deserve our respect, and Katy Gallagher demonstrated today that she does not respect them.
It will be useful if, according to the agreement made between the Chief Minister and the archbishop and those negotiating on behalf of Calvary, that letter does become available and becomes available in a way that is in accordance with that agreement. For the Deputy Chief Minister to insinuate that it has come to light in any other way is false. It is a sign of bad faith on the part of the Deputy Chief Minister.
I would like to just touch on a couple of issues. At one stage the Deputy Chief Minister said, “Look, we have to make all these investments in Calvary, and there is no other way.” She keeps saying, “There is no other way of doing it except that we own the assets.” As an indication of just how fallacious this argument is, she said, “One of the things we will have to do is build a car park.” There is no way in the world that it is necessary for the ACT government to own and operate a car park, for there to be a car park—
Ms Gallagher: Who else is going to build it?
MRS DUNNE: I could think of a whole lot of people who might do it—Wilson car parking, just as an example. There are a whole lot of people who are professional providers—
Ms Gallagher: Yes, for paid car parking.
MRS DUNNE: You pay for car parking at Calvary anyhow. There are professional providers of car parking.
Ms Gallagher: No, you do not. Libs support pay parking at the hospital? Well done, Vicki.
MRS DUNNE: There is pay parking, and it has been your proposal for a long time that there be pay parking. If it is necessary to provide car parking, it is not necessary for the government to own the structure.
The point is that there is a multitude of ways for this government to deal with the accounting problem that they say is the stumbling block to all of this. There is a multitude of ways. They can build extensions or improvements to Calvary hospital but keep them on their books and lease them to Calvary hospital at whatever rate. There is a range of things. You may not want to do it because it is not convenient for the government to do this, but there is a range of ways that they can do these things.
The critics of the original proposal to acquire Calvary hospital on a financial basis, the work done by Andrew Podger, indicate that there are ways of doing this. The work done by Tony Harris, the former Auditor-General in New South Wales, indicates that there are ways that this matter can be addressed without a hostile takeover, which is what was previously proposed by this government.
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