Page 486 - Week 02 - Thursday, 14 May 1992
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MR WESTENDE (4.05): Madam Speaker, I have been out to Ainslie Village, and I am very impressed with what is happening there. I support the Minister in his undertaking for the inquiry, but I think there are still some concerns by the residents that they have only one representative. I therefore ask the Minister whether he would undertake to make the guidelines of the inquiry as wide as possible so that they include the management structure of the village, and whether it would be possible for the Assembly to have a look at the terms of reference before they are finally set by the Minister. On receiving an undertaking on those matters, I would certainly support the Minister in this inquiry.
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (4.06): Madam Speaker, had the Government not buckled under to our request for this inquiry - and I give Mr Cornwell full credit for bringing this matter up and putting pressure on the Government to do so - and had they not buckled under to the pressure and agreed so readily to the inquiry, I would have spoken passionately in support of it. I do not need to do that now, but there are a couple of points that I think need to be made. The first is that - - -
Mr Berry: It would not make any difference either way.
MR KAINE: I keep referring to this Government as the most conservative status quo government in the world. They will not do anything unless they are forced to, and this is another example. They have been sitting on this for months. It was not until Mr Cornwell put the blowtorch on them that they decided to move. But there are a couple of issues that are important. Mr Lamont's history lesson was interesting, but of course totally irrelevant. Some of us have been around for a long time and know the history of Ainslie Village. Of course, that history is totally irrelevant, because what is relevant today is the circumstances in which the residents of the village find themselves. All that history for the last 10 years is totally irrelevant.
What this inquiry has to focus on is the current situation, what is wrong at Ainslie Village and what needs to be done to fix it. That should not take very long to find out. I hope that the inquiry moves rapidly and that we can define very quickly what the problems are and have them rectified, firstly, in the interests of the people who live there and work there and, secondly, in the interests of the broader community.
No change should be permitted to the present situation there while this inquiry is taking place. Any proposal to evict anybody should stop here and now, until this inquiry is completed. Let us protect the interests of the people there now. One of the things that the inquiry has to determine is: Is Ainslie Village just a residential village or is it to be a true village with all of the things that you would expect a village to have as part of the life of the community there? I suspect that in the end it will be determined that the latter is the case and that those people who contribute to the life of the village and people outside of it by the things that they are doing there should be retained and encouraged.
I encourage the Government not to take any precipitate action or to allow any precipitate action to take place while this inquiry is taking place. It should be done quickly; it should be over quickly; we should have the results on the table; and we should all be able to get on with our lives without the constant
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