Page 4649 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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MR COLLAERY (12.02): I have listened to the comments of prior speakers and, in amalgam, they record the various pros and cons of the Bill. I want to restrict my comments to an historical overview because I think that is important. These speeches are used as extrinsic aids, and I would like to put on record the historical development of this legislation.
On 24 October 1987, around a table tennis table at Rocky Knoll, a number of ACT citizens met. From recollection - I have not brought the minutes in today - they included, from the Casino-Free Committee, Hector Kinloch; from the Reid Residents Association, Michael Moore; representatives from the O'Connor-Lyneham interest groups and other community groups; and individual representatives, including Greg Cornwell. We resolved that we needed to amalgamate our neighbourhood action groups and to have that amalgam focus more fully on community concerns - not just those within the planning spectrum but also those that touched it, such as the Conservation Council of Canberra and the South-East Region, which was represented at that meeting, from recollection, by John Rowland. Other representatives were Anne Kent, whose husband and others had fought a major battle over the Black Mountain tower whilst I was living in France.
We came together on that fateful day of 24 October 1987, and a resolution was carried that the Residents Rally for Canberra be formed. That was carried unanimously on 24 October 1987 - with Greg Cornwell's support. On 13 November 1987, just three weeks later, the first major rally this city had ever had on planning issues, except for individual protests, was held. City Square was full. The rally had speakers of the calibre of Manning Clark, Sir Mark Oliphant, Charles McDonald of the TLC, Caitlin Crowe of the Youth Accommodation Group, and David Read of the Tuggeranong Community Council. Messages were read from Sir John Gorton, my neighbour at Rocky Knoll, Professor Reid of architecture fame, and Harold White, a former National Librarian. I mean no offence to those I am forgetting; I forgot my papers this morning.
Those records should go to the National Library, at some stage. I was looking through them on the weekend, after reading a letter in the newspaper from Don Allan, who came on the scene very late and who claimed that he had set up neighbourhood groups.
Mrs Grassby: The Labor Party did it first.
MR COLLAERY: We have debated that before with Mrs Grassby. From that representative spectrum we made official contact under a new letterhead, the Residents Rally for Canberra. I had proposed the term "Residents Rally" because I had lived in France, where I had watched a political leader secure all the arrondissements in Paris by forming a group called Reassemblement pour le Republique. He won that
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