Page 2132 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 June 1990
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The closure of the Ainslie Transfer Station is the starkest example yet of the way in which this Government operates. We have seen a total lack of consultation, little regard for the needs of the community, and an incapacity to provide a coherent overall approach to policy making. The Government must learn to understand that policy cannot be made while a vacuum of community support exists. Governments of all persuasions have an obligation to meet their constituents' needs.
Mr Speaker, nobody could have expected the Government to close the Ainslie Transfer Station. After all, Government members were a majority on the Assembly committee which recommended an expansion of the facilities at the transfer station. It is right there in this report in black-and-white. It says "investigate the possibility of establishing oil collection points at the Ainslie transfer station". Then again it says "investigate the possibility of a special collection bin at the Ainslie transfer station for organic wastes". On Mr Duby's own answer to my question on notice, organic waste comprised the majority of the waste at that transfer station.
Finally, Mr Speaker, we have the most damning recommendation of all in the Assembly's own report and the one that I believe Dr Kinloch in particular has to stick by, that "recycling facilities at both landfill sites and Ainslie Transfer Station be upgraded and access improved".
Until its closure, the Ainslie Transfer Station was used extensively by the residents of the entire north Canberra area. I have information from Mr Duby which indicates that 125,000 trips were made to the Ainslie Transfer Station annually and the waste collected was some 12,500 tonnes in the last year. It is not as if it was an underused facility. But, like all the other decisions of this Government, there was no real consideration of the facts of the case, including the facts that they have presented to me. Mr Duby's answers to questions without notice exposed the fact that the decision was taken by him in complete ignorance of the level of use of that station. The Government showed that it had no idea of the recycling level or of its impact on the community, and no plans for the Mitchell facility have been forthcoming either. Pie in the sky!
This is the same off-the-cuff, on-the-run decision making process which we have also seen in Mr Humphries' administration of health and education. As has been shown over the past few weeks, Mr Humphries has no idea about the financial issues of school closures, let alone the social issues. Likewise, Mr Duby obviously did not examine in any way the impact of his decision to close the Ainslie Transfer Station. Again we see government on the run and, in my view and in the view of many people in the ACT, totally irresponsible government. The arrogance of the members of the Government knows no bounds. We heard the
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