Page 2046 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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Given the need for more hospital facilities, the committee has not made any recommendations which would have the effect of stopping the SPIRE project, although such recommendations were suggested to us. Instead, we have aimed at improving the SPIRE project and future health projects in the ACT. The committee’s report has 26 recommendations, and I commend all of them to the Assembly.
Before I speak a bit more on a personal basis, I would like to thank the other members of the committee. First, I thank the two current members, the “MPs”, Mr Mark Parton and Mr Michael Pettersson. As this is the last report for the PUR committee for this Assembly, I would also like to very much thank the committee’s secretaries, current and past. As well as thanking the current members of the committee, I would like to thank the past members of the committee: Suzanne Orr, Tara Cheyne, Nicole Lawder and James Milligan.
The main points from our inquiry, the 26 recommendations, were about consultation and planning. Recommendations 1 to 19 were largely consultation related; recommendations 20 to 26 were planning related. I will not bore you by reading them all out—
Mr Parton: Go on.
MS LE COUTEUR: Oh, Mr Parton, I am tempted to do that, but in the interests of other members I will not read them all out. I will leave that for you to do in your speech on the subject. I will start with recommendation 2:
The Committee recommends that where there are significant changes to this or other government projects, the ACT Government proactively brings these to the attention of interested members of the community rather than expecting the community to discover the changes.
We had to put that in. Speaking personally, I remember going to a Woden Valley Community Council meeting where Minister Stephen-Smith or officials had a beautiful picture of the SPIRE-to-be. Everyone said, “Yes, it looks very pretty; it looks like a wedding cake.” But the presentation totally omitted how we were going to get to this beautiful new building. We all had our assumptions as to what it would be, but those assumptions were based on what we thought; they were not based on any evidence. When people finally worked out what was going on, the community got really upset.
Let me quote from something from the FOI. I should have acknowledged the debt of gratitude the committee has to Mrs Dunne, who—fortuitously, but not accidentally—put in a large FOI request towards the end of 2019. The information obtained from that provided a major part of the evidence for this committee. Part of it was correspondence from 28 May 2019 which said: “Plan to avoid talking too much about how it has all changed between original commitment and what we are going to deliver.” That is entirely disrespectful to the community and unhelpful when the community finally work out what is going on. They do not know why the changes happen. They do not know why they are good ideas, if they are good ideas. The
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