Page 3121 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 17 November 1992
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Tuggeranong Community Festival : Assembly Questions
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.50): Madam Speaker, I will comment briefly on a couple of the matters raised tonight, one of which is the Tuggeranong festival. I am very willing to concede that my initial reluctance to agree to funding for that has been proved to be quite unwarranted. The festival went ahead and it has clearly been, I think, the most successful of the community festivals around the ACT. When I can, I get to them all.
I would like to comment in particular, though, that part of the success of that festival was its location on the built shores of the lake. There was a time when I was one of those people who were very hesitant about similar types of activity and construction on one part of the shores of Lake Ginninderra adjacent to the Belconnen Mall and the commercial centre. Having seen the success of the planning in Tuggeranong, my views have somewhat changed and I think that in the future development around as far as the Water Police station would be quite appropriate at Lake Ginninderra. If we could do one thing that would further improve that area, it would be to reverse what must be one of Canberra's worst ever planning decisions, and that was to put that Belconnen Mall car park where there are beautiful lake views. I cannot imagine any worse thing that ever happened in planning in the ACT.
Mr Cornwell raised, quite appropriately, I think, the matter of a question I answered today. There has been a quite substantial response to me, not surprisingly, about the knocking down of those trees. Ms Szuty has a question on notice, as you point out. I do not know whether the answer has passed through my hands. It did not occur to me immediately when you raised it that it had, but I have had such a response that I had better check and make sure that I am being quite accurate in what I say here, because of the comments that have been made. It was a very deliberate act of vandalism and one that I will see will not happen again. I note what Mr Cornwell raises in the Assembly. It generally has been the practice that, if there is a question on notice or some matter on the notice paper, it is not referred to in other debate.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Assembly adjourned at 10.54 pm
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