Page 578 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 20 March 1990
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attempting to defend them and say that everybody's objections are being addressed and quietly pursued behind closed doors, well out of the light of public scrutiny. What we have heard from the Government members today, as I have said, has in no way addressed the substance of the issue that Mr Moore has raised.
We have still to see the draft legislation that Mr Kaine keeps assuring us is on its way and that legislation is, of course, absolutely crucial to resolving this issue. We have also heard that the development of the new territorial plan will involve the kind of assessment that is being called for here, and I believe that that probably is the case, but again we do not know the proposal for a public process on the development of that plan. We have not heard of a timetable.
We know of the legislative requirement on the plan, but we have not heard one word from this Government about how the Canberra community might be involved in that, or about how developers such as the developer in this case who has apparently done his money, $7.5m, might be able to have a say on it. I really think that it is time that this Government actually got on with some of the work. It is claiming to have broken new ground and made tremendous strides in relation to planning legislation. In fact, it has still not released all of the legislation, and you might notice that it seems to me quite an unusual kind of coincidence that the draft that is being released today should coincide with Mr Moore's matter of public importance. If it takes a matter of public importance to spur this lazy, inept Government into something approaching action, then I fully support Mr Moore in having brought forward this matter, and I do not know what it might take to bring forward the rest of the legislation that is so crucial.
I hope that Mr Moore is at this moment drafting a matter of public importance that might somehow spur this so-called Government into action on the approvals and orders legislation. It seems to me that the Government only acts when it feels that it absolutely has to, and only behind closed doors. It has not addressed the substance of the committee's report, it has not addressed the substance of the MPI, and it has yet to produce the full range of legislation that is necessary to overcome the situation that we currently find ourselves in.
MR JENSEN (5.00): If the issue before us today were not so important to the Canberra community, the sorts of ravings of the Leader of the Opposition today would be absolutely tragic, quite frankly. They really are a joke. The Leader of the Opposition has the gall to get up in this Assembly today and say that because Mr Moore had put on an MPI, we manufactured this piece of paper here in two hours during lunch time. What a lot of codswallop! Goodness me, that really takes the cake! That is absolutely incredible.
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