Page 3042 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 11 September 1990
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Times site. This is a cause of some concern to me, and I therefore ask the Chief Minister to allay my fears with an assurance that he is taking appropriate action to ensure that the conditions he stipulated for the surrender and regrant of the lease on that site will be complied with. I wonder whether the Chief Minister could also tell this Assembly what relationship these negotiations bear to the conflict surrounding office space on the yet to be redeveloped YMCA site - whether action to resolve those difficulties will be deferred until negotiations over the Canberra Times site are finalised?
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I was not aware of the fact that anybody is negotiating for public servants to be housed on the Canberra Times site. I can only reassure Mr Moore that when we agreed to the surrender and the reissue of the lease for that site it was made quite clear that it was the ACT Government's intention that that building, when it was erected, would not be used by public servants. We made it clear that the ACT Government would not put public servants into it, and I make the point that in the National Capital Plan the Commonwealth has given an undertaking that Commonwealth public servants will not be relocated into the Civic centre either. I expect the Commonwealth Government to live by its own position on this matter. As far as I am aware, nothing has changed; and, if the lessee seeks to change that, then it will find the Government is not amenable.
I think your second question was in connection with section 10 - the YMCA site.
Mr Moore: The point of it was: how can you stop the same thing happening?
MR KAINE: Our view remains the same in connection with that site. There is a small complication there, however, in that the National Capital Planning Authority has a far greater say in the use of that site than it does in connection with the Canberra Times site. It remains to be seen whether the view of the ACT Government prevails or whether it is the view of the National Capital Planning Authority, and therefore the Commonwealth Government, that prevails on that site; but the view of this Government is the same in connection with both sites.
MR MOORE: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. What I am really asking the Chief Minister is: how is he going to achieve that goal of ensuring that Commonwealth officers are not placed in those offices?
MR KAINE: I have to say to Mr Moore and the other members of this Assembly that I have made it clear that I expect the Commonwealth to comply with its own stated objective. We do not have great coercive power, however, and perhaps, instead of asking me this question, Mr Moore would do better to be asking the three Labor members and senators at the Federal level what they are going to do about making sure that the Commonwealth sticks by its own policy.
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