Page 2474 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 7 August 1990
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Mr Acting Speaker, I hope that members will see this as a temporary aberration on the part of Mr Berry and will not seek to use his statement as a precedent to turn our excellent committee system into a political football. I can assure members that I will take every opportunity that I can, as a member of any committee on which I serve, to ensure that due convention is maintained.
Members interjected.
MR ACTING SPEAKER: Order, members! Would you let Mr Jensen continue.
MR JENSEN: I implore Mr Berry and his Labor colleagues to forget their partisan attitude in such matters and return to the committees with the aim of ensuring that our committee reports continue to provide a major source of information for decision making by both the Government and the Assembly on a purely and utterly bipartisan basis. I commend the report to the Assembly.
MRS NOLAN (9.26): As a member of the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure, I rise today to speak briefly on the report on the new capital works program 1990-91. Mr Jensen has already touched on many of the comments that need to be made in relation to the program. However, there are some areas that I specifically want to address.
Firstly, thanks to the committee secretary, Greg McIntosh, and David James and Kim Blackburn for their invaluable assistance. As a member of the committee, I must say that it is unfortunate that it operates with only two government members. I had hoped that those parties concerned in allowing this to continue would give more consideration to the reason for the committee's existence. I hope the community is not the loser.
I think it is absolutely necessary that the Government give a formal response to the committee report on the 1990-91 capital works program before the budget is brought down. In the first recommendation of this report, the committee recommends that this be done. It would be of no value whatsoever if a formal response is not given by the Government before delivering the budget.
I will not go on and mention all the recommendations, although I consider them to be important. But I will turn now to an area of particular concern, and that is transport and engineering. The first recommendation that I want to address in that area is recommendation 14, that before any transport and engineering works are planned or designed all residents and organisations who will be directly affected by those works should be consulted and, where possible, involved in the decision making process. I believe this is necessary, and I cite the case of the closing of one of the major arterial roads into the Tuggeranong Town Centre for three months earlier this year with no-one at the town
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