Page 3660 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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MR JENSEN: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. In light of that answer and in view of the recent statements by the Chief Minister, reported in the Public Eye of 10 October, when she was referring to a two-pronged approach to consultation, that:
The second is to provide greater access to the information required to all those in our community to participate on an equal basis ...
will the Minister make available to the public details of the approvals for the demolition, including the certificate of the unsound nature of the building, which were used by the Heritage Committee to make its recommendation?
MR WOOD: This information, I would expect, is quite freely available, and I will facilitate the release of whatever information is there. Through you, Mr Speaker, I would invite Mr Collaery, next time he is in a war zone like that, to pick up the phone and talk to the people concerned. They would very readily give him the information to save the sort of embarrassment that he faced.
Quarterly Economic Report
MR KAINE: I would like to direct a question to the Chief Minister and Treasurer. Why did the Government suppress the issuing of the quarterly economic report for the June quarter until after the budget was brought down?
MS FOLLETT: I think Mr Kaine is having a bit of fun with that question. There is no question of that report having been suppressed. Indeed, there is no reason why it should have been suppressed. If he is implying, Mr Speaker, that it might have been suppressed because it was very bad news, he is quite wrong, because I think the quarterly report to which he refers indicates, as have a number of quarterly reports, that the ACT economy is holding up reasonably well under the recession that Australia is currently facing. There is no question of it having been suppressed. To the best of my knowledge, it was made available as soon as it was printed and certainly as soon as it came to my office.
MR KAINE: I ask a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. I can assure the Treasurer that I was refused a copy of it, and I was told that it was not available until after the budget was brought down, so it was certainly suppressed. As to the good news, I would like to ask another question. I refer to page 5 of the report, where it refers specifically to tourism performance. It notes that total hotel and motel takings fell by 4.3 per cent in real terms in the June quarter, that they were 9.3 per cent lower than in the June quarter 1990 and that visits to selected major tourist attractions in the June quarter 1991 were 22.6 per cent lower than in the same quarter of 1990.
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