Ms WALKER - 2015-04-30
In its last term of government Labor started work towards the construction of a hospital for the people of Palmerston and greater Darwin. While your government has been dragging its feet and making excuses, under Labor’s plan this hospital would be nearing completion. This year’s budget includes revoted planning and construction work for the Palmerston Regional Hospital. According to your own budget books you are still in the planning stage, dragging your feet and crawling further behind schedule. You have missed deadline after deadline. You are cutting primary health spending. You have failed to deliver on a promised paediatric ward. How can Territorians trust anything you say about the delivery of health services when your track record indicates you have no intention of delivering them?
ANSWER
Sometimes one is offered a smorgasbord of opportunity and you are left with only one question: where do I start? The shadow minister forgot to mention the bubonic plague, which was also my fault. The outbreak of smallpox in the 1800s, that was me as well. This is the sort of question that leaves you bereft.
I remember the former government’s attempt at building the Palmerston hospital. They erected a monumental fence. It was a fine fence; it did fency things and surrounded a bunch of bulldozers and other equipment which was paid for to be parked there indefinitely. There was never a job, but they were hiring the bulldozers to park them on the block so people could drive past and say, ‘Ooh, the Labor government has some bulldozers on the block’. They were really good bulldozers, but like so many garden gnomes, they were merely monuments. That question demonstrates the extraordinary incompetence of the former Labor government.
I pay a tribute to the members for Araluen and Fong Lim, former Health ministers, because they were stepping forward through this process and we have been able to secure money from the Commonwealth to ensure this will to be built. If the honourable member would like to cast open the budget book she says she has read she would notice $25m is in the infrastructure budget to start building the hospital.
That is a lot of planning. You would have a pile of plans about as thick as Parliament House. Alternatively, the reality is that is infrastructure money that will go into slabs, water pipes and work on the area that people will be able to see. Has the honourable member not noticed all of the works on the Stuart Highway at the front of the site of Palmerston hospital? There is millions of dollars of work preparing for the Palmerston hospital site.
This is a little like the person in a room full of purple things looking for purple things saying, ‘Can’t find anything here’. For God’s sake, whoever writes these questions, do it better!
ANSWER
Sometimes one is offered a smorgasbord of opportunity and you are left with only one question: where do I start? The shadow minister forgot to mention the bubonic plague, which was also my fault. The outbreak of smallpox in the 1800s, that was me as well. This is the sort of question that leaves you bereft.
I remember the former government’s attempt at building the Palmerston hospital. They erected a monumental fence. It was a fine fence; it did fency things and surrounded a bunch of bulldozers and other equipment which was paid for to be parked there indefinitely. There was never a job, but they were hiring the bulldozers to park them on the block so people could drive past and say, ‘Ooh, the Labor government has some bulldozers on the block’. They were really good bulldozers, but like so many garden gnomes, they were merely monuments. That question demonstrates the extraordinary incompetence of the former Labor government.
I pay a tribute to the members for Araluen and Fong Lim, former Health ministers, because they were stepping forward through this process and we have been able to secure money from the Commonwealth to ensure this will to be built. If the honourable member would like to cast open the budget book she says she has read she would notice $25m is in the infrastructure budget to start building the hospital.
That is a lot of planning. You would have a pile of plans about as thick as Parliament House. Alternatively, the reality is that is infrastructure money that will go into slabs, water pipes and work on the area that people will be able to see. Has the honourable member not noticed all of the works on the Stuart Highway at the front of the site of Palmerston hospital? There is millions of dollars of work preparing for the Palmerston hospital site.
This is a little like the person in a room full of purple things looking for purple things saying, ‘Can’t find anything here’. For God’s sake, whoever writes these questions, do it better!
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016