Page 2162 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 6 June 1990
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MR MOORE: It is totally relevant, Mr Speaker, and I shall point it out for your benefit as I speak to the motion. The motion clearly has to deal with the paper that the Chief Minister tabled yesterday, which is a response on not only the - - -
Mr Collaery: No, it was put on the notice paper before.
MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, the point is that almost every speaker has referred to the paper because the two must be taken in conjunction. It is totally relevant to talk about the Griffin Centre in conjunction with it. The point that I am trying to make is that in an insidious way the community groups are being used. They are being given a promise of something in order to allow a redevelopment to go ahead and they are not going to have the wool pulled over their eyes in that way. It is the same thing that happened with the Uniting Church site, which I have heard Mr Collaery speak about so often. It is exactly the same sort of thing. The community members become the winners in the sense that they get a new community site, which is expensive, luxurious and fits in all these categories, and we still have not heard a guarantee such as Mr Connolly called for. How can you get an airtight guarantee from this Government anyway? But we have not even heard a guarantee that there will be no rises in the rents at the Griffin Centre for the tenants.
It is so easy for a government that wishes to, to take somebody who has not got any guarantees in these ways and just push the rents up until community groups cannot afford it. The developers can then put their beady eyes on what is now a lovely building which can easily be converted into something else. A government that is looking for extra funds can find a method of doing it that way.
What we have is a situation where a proposed community development is inconsistent with our planning policies. We have a situation where the planning becomes developer driven instead of planning driven, and it has been proposed by the Chief Minister, who is also Minister for planning. It is a very ironic situation. I do not know whether he just does not understand the ramifications or whether he does not understand the extra recurrent costs that will come about. But they are significant. They are excessive. They are a major cost to our community, as indeed will be the 700 extra office spaces that he approved on the Canberra Times site yesterday. And that is before you start looking at environmental factors.
It seems that the Chief Minister places most importance on budgetary concerns and costs, and that is why I use this argument to point out to him the extra costs that will be involved in this particular area. The extra development that will go on top of where the Griffin Centre is will require not only public transport but also car parking, and we will have had a removal of further car parking sites. There is a car park that is currently set aside for people
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