Page 2421 - Week 06 - Thursday, 24 June 2010
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your patient is currently unable to be accommodated within the category 1 time frame, here is a date. If this date is acceptable and it is outside the 30-day
time frame—ie, your patient is not urgent and does not need to have 30 days—
Mr Seselja: It means they’ve got no choice.
MS GALLAGHER: Read the policy, Mr Seselja. Do not just read the letter; read the policy that underpins this. If a doctor determines that their patient can wait longer than 30 days for surgery, then their patient is no longer a category 1 patient.
Planning—McGregor hall
MS LE COUTEUR: My question is to the Chief Minister and concerns McGregor hall, which is reportedly going to be demolished to make way for development in the coming months. Given that McGregor hall is such an important venue for local musicians and other community groups, what assistance is the government providing to ensure that these groups can still access affordable venues which are appropriately located for public transport and noise issues?
MR STANHOPE: I thank Ms Le Couteur for the question. Ms Le Couteur, I accept the importance of ensuring that community groups do have open access to reasonably priced venues for meetings and community activity. The government seeks to ensure that there is an adequate supply of such meeting places throughout the whole of the ACT. From time to time, of course, places that have been used for meetings will be redeveloped, their essential purpose will change and there will be, occasionally and unavoidably, some disruption to community-based activity.
Having said that, let me say that you would be aware, Ms Le Couteur, that the government has, just over the last couple of years, spent somewhere in the order of just on $30 million providing new community-based halls and facilities across the whole of the ACT. There are significantly enhanced facilities in, I think, eight very extensively refurbished sites across the territory. Indeed, the work in relation to the development of community parks and those community facilities is, I think, coming to a conclusion.
Certainly there is disruption from time to time, as some facilities reach their useful life and are changed, demolished or rebuilt or have the essential purpose changed. But the government has been very active, through schools, through closed schools, through refurbished sites and through the development of eight new community centres across the territory, most particularly. And in saying that, I do not take into account venues such as the new $8 million Belconnen Arts Centre, which has become a major focus for meetings within the heart of Belconnen. One of the refurbished community centres is at Holt, a suburb adjacent to Macgregor. Indeed, new community centres have been invested in very extensively by the government.
But in the context of McGregor as such, I will make some inquiries to better inform myself on the implications for the residents of Macgregor in relation to the change in that particular amenity.
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