Page 4602 - Week 16 - Tuesday, 27 November 1990
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attacking the Government in the strongest terms and would point to the strongest alleged failure of the Government. Well, the strongest alleged failure of the Follett Government, from Mr Collaery's remarks on page 2989 of Hansard - I will make it easier for the Attorney-General - was this:
There is ... a crisis in development and planning approvals in this Territory. No provision was made in the budget for a planning tribunal ...
Well, I made it a matter of importance during the estimates process this year to ask the Law Office and Treasury officers, when we were discussing the estimates for the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, what allowances had been made for additional work that may come before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal consequent upon the passage of the planning legislation. We were talking about the budget and the Appropriation Bill which takes Government spending through to 30 June 1991. I was told that there was no expectation that there would be any additional work because the legislation would not be in place and the AAT jurisdiction, which is intended to be vested in planning and leasehold matters, would not be triggered.
So here is the present Attorney-General saying on 5 December 1989 that there is a crisis and that no provision has been made in the budget for the planning tribunal; yet here we are 12 months later looking at the budget brought down to cover us through to 30 June 1991 and again, Mr Speaker, in the words of the present Attorney-General, no provision has been made in the budget for the planning tribunal. This ramshackle coalition, this group of ambitious officeholders opposite - particularly the Residents Rally; and we look again at the pink book, this wonderful wish list - was strong on rhetoric on reform of the leasehold system and the planning system in this Territory when in opposition, but in practice, in office, they have done nothing.
There has been a lot of cant referred to in this chamber in recent months about the performance of the Alliance Government compared to the performance of the Labor Government on the development of this legislative package. We as an opposition have been very responsible on this issue. Any person who looks at the development of this package of legislation, should it ever be eventually produced by the Alliance Government in the future, will trace a clear progression from the Mant report through to the proposals placed out for public discussion by the Follett Government through to the Bills in their exposure draft now put before the house.
It has been made clear repeatedly that this is an issue with general bipartisan support. The Alliance Government cannot claim that their land management and leasehold legislation and the other planning legislation that they tabled in a rough exposure form earlier this year were some
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