Page 2489 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 14 November 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
it has stolen a march on the ACT and already has very firm indicators that set it up ahead of us to date in terms of having some part of the core at least if we treat Wollongong as part of the metropolitan Sydney area. If we do not treat Wollongong as part of the metropolitan Sydney area, as the diagram following page 35 indicates, then Wollongong of course is ahead of us, with the recent announcements by Professor McLachlan and others with regard to technological emplacements for Wollongong.
Mr Speaker, the Jervis Bay territory is a fascinating appendage to the ACT - or it was. I went down there recently, on the old Sassafras Road. I had not been down there for 20 years. Sadly, the lyrebirds have gone. That road, except for one small section, could easily carry a rail link, and Jervis Bay itself could be connected quite easily to Canberra, in a single run to a major seaport. I imagine some people would wince at that prospect. Additionally there is already a very sizeable naval airfield there, in terms of airport connection.
So really, the MFP does not explore a lot of the options. Certainly, from an environmental point of view, I would not be pushing that one, but I see it as one issue that does not appear to have been carried. Given the constitutional structure of this country, in connection with section 92, a seaport for Canberra could have quite interesting implications into the next century for the economic future of this Territory. There is one aspect of the absence perhaps of some wider lateral thinking.
I would join with Dr Kinloch in mentioning style. Some of the diagrams and photos are not numbered and the pages on which they are printed are not numbered. It is difficult when you are analysing a document like this and referring to it as a consultant to a client if you are not able to refer accurately to an element of the document. But it is the beginning, Mr Speaker. The real gain to date is the large bipartisan acknowledgement of the broader issues, including the environment, which of course is not a topical issue; it is going to be a long-running, sustained issue for the future of the Territory.
Mr Speaker, the MFP idea has not explored the concept of how far we wish to go with the population growth of the ACT; what the end limit is, even with clean and high-tech industry; how far the Canberra growth should go; and whether it is proper that, with self-government, the ACT lost the potential seaport that it could have had, along with a corridor on that route through Braidwood to Jervis Bay.
There are still significant, if I could call them that, appendage arguments latent in the document. They are that we are an appendage of the larger cosmopolitan and metropolitan centres. If this is to be a document that takes us into the twenty-first century, perhaps it should have explored more broadly setting up Canberra itself as
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .