Page 146 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 1990
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to achieve a bipartisan approach with the Government in relation to this and related matters. I would like to quote, Mr Speaker, from yesterday's Hansard. Trevor Kaine said:
At least under this Government -
This is when he was justifying the constitutional mutants.
... people can talk to somebody. One of the constant complaints that I had until 5 December was, "We cannot get to talk to anybody. We always end up talking not even to the monkey but to the monkey's assistant, or we can't even get access to the fifth floor to talk to anybody". At least now people do have somebody to whom they can talk; we are responding to the needs of the public ...
Rosemary Follett wrote a letter to Trevor Kaine seeking his cooperation to arrive at a bipartisan approach on planning matters. We believed most sincerely that the interests of the people of the ACT would be served best by a joint party approach in relation to this matter.
To this day Trevor Kaine has not even acknowledged that letter from Rosemary Follett; to this day he has not bothered to reply to that letter from Rosemary Follett. To this day only one thing has been done in response to a letter from the Leader of the Opposition to the Chief Minister of this Territory in relation to one of the most fundamental issues of this, and that is that the Chief Minister sent a staff member of a backbencher to inquire, "What's all this about?" That is the disgrace of this situation. So it is left to us to present our position as the basis for discussion. We hope that the Government will find some common ground with the position that we take on this matter.
We recognise that the Government has been there for only two and a half months, that it has focused its attention on planning matters only since lunchtime today and that it may be some time before it arrives at some response in relation to the National Capital Planning Authority's draft plan for the ACT. This draft National Capital Plan is of considerable importance as it relates to the future of the citizens of the ACT, as it relates to the future government of this Territory and as it relates to the whole question of the sovereignty of government in the ACT.
The origins of the issue and of this particular dilemma relate back to the parcel of legislation which was passed through the Federal Parliament in relation to self-government. There was a package of four Bills, one of which related to self-government powers, one in relation to electoral matters, one in relation to consequential provisions that flowed from the whole process of self-government and, finally, one in relation to planning and land management. It is in that last piece of legislation that
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