Page 2288 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 1 November 1989
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disposal - and also the controls suggested by the committee will mean that the public can be assured that this project will be safe.
There was much concern over a seeming lack of public consultation with the granting of the lease of the site, and one of the recommendations of this committee is that on projects like this the opportunity for consultation be made available to the public. After having all the briefings - and may I say that I appreciate the briefings that we did get, and the people involved were very helpful - I really do not have any worries about the environmental aspects of this project. I wish Mr Da Deppo and other people involved all the best and I hope they succeed. I also would like to thank Peta Roberts for all her assistance during the inquiry.
MR WOOD (11.14): I support the remarks of Mr Humphries, who gave a very clear exposition of the committee's proceedings and the decisions that we have taken. This is an important debate because of the issues raised during it, but I believe it is more important because of its part in a wider debate.
There has been in this Territory a long-running debate, going back perhaps a year or more, in which there have been repeated claims from certain parts of the community about mismanagement or malpractice or abuses of the system; indeed the word "corruption" has sometimes been used. As a result of that, the Assembly has had to consider a number of matters, and that has been the prompt for one of our committees to inquire into whether there is a need to establish some sort of anti-corruption agency.
That has been the wider debate. But what has been the basis of all this debating? This report tells us. In this matter, as in many other matters, there has been a lot of noise but there has been no evidence. Now, I am very alert to what is going on. I am very concerned that when I put my signature on a report it is one that I can have confidence in, and when there are claims of dubious dealings and the like I look at our findings most carefully before I give my endorsement to it.
What does this report say? Well, let me tell you what this report says. I am putting this report into the context of that wider debate, and what this report says the wider debate will also show in due course. Let me give three quotes from this report. In the preface it is stated:
The committee attributes no blame whatsoever to Mr Da Deppo about the perceived lack of public consultation on the project and congratulates him on the innovativeness of the project.
Paragraph 9.6 in the report states:
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