Page 3672 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010
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we will look at those options. We will study them, we will examine them and we will do what we did last time. We will look at two things: what principally is in the best health interests of the ACT, in particular the residents of the north of Canberra, and what is the best option fiscally for our budget. We did that last time, and we will do that again as we move forward with these options.
I look forward to seeing the detail of these options so that we can make the same detailed response that we made when the last option was put on the table. I would ask that the minister table the advice that she has received from PricewaterhouseCoopers and also the advice that she said the Audit Office has also provided her.
Ms Gallagher: No, no, I did not say that.
MR HANSON: So she is refusing to do that. It will make it difficult for us to make those decisions that we have got to make as we have a look at this information and the options moving forward if we are not provided the full remit of information. If we are not provided with the advice, if, again, the minister and the government are going to withhold information, then we are going to end up in the same situation we had last time—deals being cooked up behind closed doors and only parts of information being provided to the Assembly and the community.
These options should be examined and passed to the Auditor-General. I remind you, Mr Assistant Speaker, that I tried to have this looked at by the Auditor-General in October, and that request was denied by the crossbench and by the government. If the detail and the advice are hidden, it will make it difficult for us to come forward to say, “Yes, we embrace this plan because it is the right plan,” whichever option they decide.
I have only had a very brief opportunity to look at the options, but it does appear to me that some of these options are actually not dependent on this new advice and that these are options that could have been put on the table previously. Maybe one or two of them are, but certainly a couple of the options appear to be options that could have been put on the table two years ago. One option is basically to say, “We’re going to help you build a new private hospital,” and another is that you are going to go off and build a new public hospital and, I assume, gift the other entity to Little Company of Mary to run as a private hospital.
Ms Gallagher: They legally own it.
MR HANSON: Well, on one hand you are saying that and on the other you are not. But the point is that these options appear to be options that we could have looked at earlier. They are not dependent on any change of advice. When we said there were a number of options that we could consider, that has been proved entirely correct.
I ask again that the advice be provided to us so that we can understand why these changes are being made to the government’s position from a single option—buy—to four options. I say again that we do want to work constructively. There will always be some political argy-bargy, but it is the role of the opposition in this place to hold this government to account and to scrutinise. I make the point that we were the party in this Assembly that said we were going to look at this in detail, and when we saw that
this was not the way to proceed, that we did need to start spending $77 million
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