Page 619 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 1990
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The Alliance Government is fully aware of the decision to carry out thorough environmental assessments. We are committed to ensuring that development decisions made now do not compromise the environment quality of the ACT in the future. That is why the legislation that was tabled yesterday in this Assembly will be a forerunner for the type of environmental impact legislation for this country. It is a major plus for the ACT in relation to environmental impact assessment legislation. We will be very interested to hear the comments on that from members of the Opposition when that matter comes up for debate in this house.
Mr Speaker, there are a number of environmental impacts which are typically associated with construction projects of this size. They have already been identified. There were even environmental aspects associated with the construction project of the building of the new Parliament House. There were some major environmental concerns about that at the time. A hill was removed and replaced by a building. But those concerns were got around and the situation was resolved.
As far as the VFT is concerned, the impacts include short term ones applicable only to the construction phase, and long term ones on wildlife, heritage and aboriginal sites and river and flood plain crossings. All these aspects will be taken into account during the development and process of the route. Let us look at the comments that were made by the ACT Government in relation to this issue. The Government's submission - the report entitled Response to the VFT Concept, dated January 1990 - refers to all the areas in which there is concern. In fact there are 127 items in the back of that report. For example, there is Annexure A - Sites of known heritage significance in the proposed VFT corridor. All those things will be looked at and taken into account during this assessment. Then, of course, there are the noise and visual impacts of the train itself. Once again we hear much emotional talk about these impacts. I suggest that there will be a time and place when a lot of the emotional aspects of this matter can be put to rest.
The ACT VFT Advisory Committee will be advising the Government on the likely environmental impacts of the VFT project on the ACT and the region, as part of satisfying its formal terms of reference. This committee has sought and received several submissions from the community concerning the impact of the project on the ACT environment. I also seem to recall that the chairman of that committee is very careful to provide opportunities for the community to participate in this discussion, to make sure that the community can put its point of view. The committee has gone out of its way to ensure this. The chairman and members have said that they do not want the VFT people at those meetings; they want the community to be able to have their say. I think that is a very appropriate course for the chairman, Mr Scully, to take and it is one that we fully support.
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