SOLDIERS’ CLINIC OUSTED FOR GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT

Evening Star, Issue 26103, 17 May 1947, Page 8

SOLDIERS’ CLINIC OUSTED FOR GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT

CANBERRA, May 16. “ The Government has shown churlishness and cold indifference to - pleas by returned servicemen,” said Mr H. L. Anthony (Country Party), who moved the adjournment of the House of Representatives to discuss the displacement of invalid returned soldiers from a Sydney building to make way for tile Taxation Department. He explained that plans to establish an out-patients’ clinic for ex-service-men in the building had been abandoned following the decision to permit the Taxation. Department to take over the tenth floor of the building. The decision would mean that ailing and crippled returned soldiers must travel to the already over-crowded Randwick iiispital for treatment. The Minister of Repatriation, Mr H. C. Barnard, said that if the matter were merely one of sentiment, the returned soldiers could have the space immediately, but the accommodation problems of other people had to be considered. Fares alone in the transport of patients to and from Randwick cost the Government £2O a day. Of his three sons in the war, one had been killed, one had a permanent eye injury, and the third l received a tuberculosis pension. * After an hour’s debate, the Government applied the gag, and the motion for an adjournment was lost.