Page 2488 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 14 November 1989
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Australia has a long history of selling off the farm to "great and powerful" friends in return for peppercorns.
We have a long history of treating Australia as an empty space - from nuclear bomb testing at Maralinga, dumping of radio-active waste, and monitoring the possibility of a nuclear first-strike by the USA, to woodchipping disappearing rainforests.
Perhaps it is time to stop and consider that the consequences go far beyond short term economic gains.
The multifunctional polis proposal needs wider debate.
That article was written by Paul James, a lecturer in social theory at Melbourne University. Perhaps it highlights that, certainly well prior to any serious consideration being given to such a proposal, there needs to be full and informed debate both in parliament and in public prior to anything happening.
On 29 September this year Senator Button issued a statement on the multifunction polis, but unfortunately it has not been made public. It has just gone to certain groups but is not available for the rest of us to see. Any suggested benefits of the MFP to Canberrans specifically, and Australians in general, I feel, should be concrete and exact prior to going ahead with such a proposal which on the surface sounds highly attractive. So the point which I make and which I emphasise is that there needs to be a great deal more open debate. This has not been shown to be the case over the last two years in Australia.
MR COLLAERY (4.06): I have only a few comments to make. As an Assembly member I welcome a largely bipartisan debate of this nature. It is good to hear the various people contributing to an aggregate outlook. I have a very small contribution to make. It is not the area that I have been assigned to comment upon within our Rally function.
Mr Speaker, the study is informative, and of course it is speculative in some regard. It occurred to me that some of the speculation could have been of a further amplitude. It does refer at page 35 to the Kings Highway connecting the ACT with the south coast at Batemans Bay. I found that somewhat narrow in its concept and also, in the diagram of the transport links, the tie in with the VFT seemed to some extent to restrict the thinking that is latent in the document.
It is apparent to me at least that a seaport gives Wollongong, for instance - and I am trying to be objective on this - a strong argument for the MFP itself. Of course
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