Page 1436 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 1 May 1990
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MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Moore, please debate the motion before the Assembly.
MR MOORE: That is what I am doing. The motion, Mr Speaker, is to give him the opportunity to do so, so that we can get a straight option, a straight chance, for people in north Canberra to see that the whole of that Government supports or opposes Mr Duby in this stupid decision. We need a motion to do that, and that is why, Mr Speaker, it is absolutely essential that this motion be put before this house.
MR WOOD (4.59): Mr Speaker, I will support this motion to suspend standing orders so that we may place this matter before the house. Unfortunately, suspension now seems necessary so that we can do so. We need to suspend standing orders because we discovered today that one person at least was consulted in this process - one person admitted to that, but we have not found any others. Let us suspend standing orders so that we can have a consultation to explore them. They have not been adequately explored to date, and we need to do it.
We need also to suspend standing orders to discuss the rather outrageous claim and the point raised in this motion concerning consideration of environmental aspects. We need to clarify those points because there seems to be some confusion on that side of the house about what is and what is not an environmental benefit.
It seems to me that there is some problem of a conceptual nature with the Minister and his colleagues, so that would surely lead to that third point of the motion, to get a publicly available cost-benefit analysis. The costs, on a superficial view, can be hidden. The Government has clearly seen a $200,000 benefit but it has declined to see that there is a much more substantial cost to the ACT taxpayers who believe that they pay their rates to get a service that has now gone. It is difficult to get a precise estimation of the additional kilometres that will be travelled - and that will be an expense to the ACT community - but on estimates from people with whom I was discussing it at the weekend it would not be less than 1.4 million kilometres extra a year worth of petrol and gases pouring into the atmosphere. That is the environmental side. On the cost-benefit side we would see that the cost spread across the ACT community would be much greater than $200,000.
Mr Kaine: On a point of order, Mr Speaker; Mr Wood is debating the substance of the motion.
MR SPEAKER: You are debating the issue, Mr Wood. Please stick to the motion.
MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, the grounds for suspension are valid. They have my support, and I believe they should have the support of the Assembly.
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