Page 2551 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 7 August 1991
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The issue that Mr Humphries has raised, of course, is the methodology we should use when there are issues of such importance that we ought let the people decide them. Clearly, the only way to really determine what people think is to put issues to referendum. I would not suggest that the billboard issue should ever have gone to referendum, because it is certainly not of that calibre. Nevertheless, the concepts that are raised by Mr Humphries do reflect the need for that methodology to be available for us.
His attitude to the billboard and Mr Duby's attitude to the billboard are quite appalling. It is not so much an attitude to a billboard as an attitude to the ethos and the design and the sense of what Canberra is. They clearly do not have it. What they are looking to do is the sort of thing that I saw as I drove down southward from Queensland. There was billboard after billboard after billboard along the road. The vast majority of them were telling us how wonderful cigarettes are, and, of course, the City Hill billboard never did that. It was a chink in the armour. City Hill is not just a piece of dirt as Mr Duby would have us believe.
Mr Duby: As I contemptuously described it.
MR MOORE: Mr Duby now interjects, "Contemptuously described it". He will now interject and say, if I am not mistaken, that it is - - -
Mr Duby: Your sacred site.
MR MOORE: A sacred site. That is a part of the nature of Canberra. A sacred site is not a bad way to describe such areas as City Hill and the hilltops in Canberra. It is quite a good description - Canberra nature park. That is exactly what it should be and that is how it should happen. Therefore, Mr Speaker, I must say that I am absolutely delighted to see the end of this billboard.
MR JENSEN (4.21): Mr Speaker, I think there was some suggestion that I may be closing the debate on this, but I do not believe that that is correct, because Mr Wood, in fact, moved a motion to discharge the matter from the notice paper. So, it is not as if I am closing the debate. Mr Speaker, as one of the members of the committee that looked at this particular issue and was involved in preparing the report, I think it is important to remember that the area in which the billboard was located is under the control, for planning purposes, of the National Capital Planning Authority - not the Interim Territory Planning Authority, as it was then, or the now Territory Planning Authority.
It seems that this billboard was put up there on a temporary basis. When the bicentenary came along it was decided to turn it into a more permanent fixture, and that is where it stayed. It would seem that we could not,
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