Page 1284 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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My colleague Mr Moore has at times suggested that there should be some consideration for the area of Barton to be redeveloped. Where is the process, where are the ideas for that, Mr Speaker? We seem to be suggesting that there is only one other site - in fact, two, when you think of the section 19 site - that provides the necessary impetus for the economic development of this city. The Rally does not accept that they are the only issues. We are strongly supportive of the matter.
MR HUMPHRIES (5.33): How long do I have, Mr Speaker?
MR SPEAKER: About four minutes.
Mr Whalan: But you will be able to speak on the motion.
MR HUMPHRIES: I will. That is an extraordinary benefit I did not think I would have. I have the 60-second speech ready but I will give the four-minute speech now.
MR SPEAKER: A correction: Mr Humphries, you have two minutes.
MR HUMPHRIES: It is getting less all the time. This is the two-minute speech.
Mr Speaker, there seems to be the assumption in some quarters that a place the size of Canberra has its own momentum, that this number of people living in any one place must generate a certain number of jobs, that those people require services, that therefore other industries are developed and so on, and that somehow jobs automatically will be created for these people living on the Limestone Plains.
Anybody who has been involved with government and involved with economic planning knows that just does not happen. It is a brief of every government everywhere in the world to foster growth, to foster jobs, to create appropriate development, and it is one of the things that has to happen here in Canberra as much as anywhere else. To do that, the Government has to create the proper legal framework, the proper economic environment and the proper political climate. I submit to you, Mr Speaker, that the decision taken on the Canberra Times site, proper as it may be in the legal framework in which it was taken, is not conducive to creating that appropriate environment for development for the creation of jobs to go ahead.
People in the Rally, for example, criticised the idea that certain sorts of developments might not be appropriate for certain sites in Civic. I should point out that people who are prepared to risk millions of dollars by investing in this community might not be so capable of being told "You shall develop here; you shall develop this particular kind of development; you shall do it in such and such a way; you shall spend so much on it; you shall create so many jobs", et cetera.
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