Page 2384 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 August 2017
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that after you commission reports, you prioritise investment. And I would agree with that. But what a really good government does then is to get on and do the work. In the case of the switchboard, which is the outstanding and largest problem confronting us at the hospital, we have a litany of examples of not getting on and doing the work, some of which Mr Milligan outlined in question time today.
With respect to the reason that I have brought forward this motion, Mr Rattenbury is correct; the number seems large, with 143 issues which are high priority. But some of those individual high priorities may be easy to fix. Some of them might be just taking the duct tape off a circuit breaker so that it functions properly. That could be a high priority issue and it may not cost much to do. It is important for the community and it is important for the transparency of the Assembly that we know what those issues are.
The minister, not in her comments in this debate but in question time today, asked whether it was a surprise to the opposition that the government proposed to spend $97 million on this project. No, it is not a surprise to the opposition that the government propose to spend $97 million on this project. Mr Hanson, as the shadow minister for health, during the previous budget estimates drilled down into this quite significantly and asked the then Minister for Health significant and detailed questions about what this money, this $97 million, was going to be spent on, and the then Minister for Health refused to answer the questions in detail.
In relation to Mr Hanson’s questions on notice about this $97 million expenditure and what it was to be used for—and he asked specific things about how much was for the electrical upgrades and how much was for hydraulic upgrades and things like that—the answer was a dismissive one-line answer which I do not actually recollect word for word so I will not quote it. We have known since the last budget about this, and when we could not get the answers from the minister himself, that was why we pursued the AECOM report, and why we have pursued it for some time.
The minister, in her comments during the debate and on radio this morning, seemed to imply that the opposition had done something nefarious because we have had access to this report since 19 June. That is true; I think it was on a Friday. Late in the evening the report came back from the independent legal arbiter and the report said that he did not uphold the claim of privilege. I spoke to the Clerk about what the process was from here. The Clerk said, “I’ve got one hard copy. It’s several hundred pages long. Not every member of the opposition wants a copy, do they?” I said, “I would like a copy,” and that I would let him know whether anyone else wanted a copy. No-one else has come to me saying they would like a copy. I received this report on the Monday after the Friday, which was in mid-June.
I have not done anything publicly with this because this report was not published and did not attract privilege until yesterday, when it was tabled in this Assembly. The only thing I have done with it is read it, and my staff have read it. I did ask questions about the AECOM report in the estimates hearing, but the questions I asked were of a general nature and did not relate to the specific things in this report because this report had not been published. It was published yesterday and I have brought these matters to the attention of the Assembly as soon as the report was published.
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