Page 4438 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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That is not to say that the members of the committee do not have considerable sensitivity to the arguments that were put forward by people who were going to be directly concerned by this project. We believe that there is a case for getting the new legislation in place as quickly as possible and not necessarily deferring it until the middle of next year or some later time.
Mr Jensen put forward a dissenting report, which he is quite entitled to do. I suspect that Mr Jensen would really like to see the proposed law in place now. In that respect, he has some sympathy for the argument put forward by some of the players in the game. The other members of the committee do not accept that view. All we can say to the Government is that there is some real concern about the process by which this particular development proposal has been handled. There is real concern that the decision that has been made is the wrong one. We can only recommend to the Government that they consider very carefully the views that were expressed to the committee, and perhaps consider whether or not they may wish to review that decision, defer it or give it some further consideration before the process goes ahead.
But, that said, the recommendations of the committee, I think, are quite self-evident; and we are not recommending to the Government that they should do anything at this stage. We believe that the process that was followed was a legal process, although some arguments perhaps were not given sufficient weight in the consideration before the decision was made.
Mr Speaker, I finish as I began. I think it is regrettable that the committee did not have longer to pursue some aspects of the arguments put forward by people with a direct interest. We were constrained by the fact that there was a motion of disallowance on the table in this Assembly. We believed that we had to put our comments to the Assembly so that they could be taken into account if that disallowance motion was to be debated. It may just give members a different view and perhaps a little more information about the concerns of the community before that debate takes place.
MR JENSEN (8:37): Mr Speaker, in my opening remarks, I think it is appropriate to comment on the final point made by Mr Kaine. The point really is that, if the Government had waited for the report of this committee, the motion of disallowance would not have been necessary because the committee may have been able to make a firmer recommendation. That is one of the problems with the main part of this report. It draws conclusions but really does not make any recommendations for the Government. That was one of the reasons why I saw fit to submit my own conclusions and recommendations.
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