Page 3610 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 8 December 1992
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being told that I have skated over this thing lightly and I have no regard for people's reasonable doubts. The other point - it was Ms Szuty's concluding remark - is that she does not believe that it is the role of the Assembly standing committee to rubber stamp variations. Madam Speaker, neither do I. I did not rubber stamp them in this case, nor will I at any time in the future do so. For Ms Szuty or anybody else to suggest that I and other members of the committee are guilty of either of the two things that she has made reference to here is quite regrettable.
MR DE DOMENICO (4.57): I am going to be very brief on this topic, because I think Mr Lamont and Mr Kaine have quite lucidly described the facts of the matter on these developments. I rise very briefly to express concern at the fact that Ms Szuty and others in the community have said various things, starting last weekend, about what happened at the meeting of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee. I can say to people who have made comments from time to time that there will be some times when people in this Assembly and people on committees disagree. There will also be some times when decisions made by this Assembly and by various committees of this Assembly are not agreed to by various members of our community. So be it. To be 100 per cent agreeable every time, we would all have to be perfect, and we are not perfect. For any member of the community to imply that any member of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee did not take into account, as much as possible, every concern expressed in the allowable time is just not right. I urge Mr Moore not to make any comment, because he is not a member of the committee and he does not know what went on in committee meetings.
Mr Moore and Ms Szuty may, for various political reasons, wish to have their names in headlines over the West Belconnen issue. Perhaps it is because Mr Moore has, all of a sudden, taken a great interest in West Belconnen, which is nowhere near Reid. All members of the committee, including Ms Szuty, had a fantastic opportunity to go through the proposed variations and all the information put forward to that committee. The committee went further, as Mr Lamont said. We in fact met time and time again last Friday - some of us cancelled other appointments - to make sure that Ms Szuty had every opportunity of asking those questions that she felt needed to be asked. She was given that opportunity. For anybody in the community to say that the decisions made by that committee were wrong decisions is a matter of opinion, but to say that those decisions were taken lightly is simply not true. Anybody who says that in this house should withdraw and think very seriously about apologising to all members of the committee for anything that might be said outside.
MS ELLIS (5.00): I was not going to speak on this issue; but, being the fifth and remaining member of the PDIC, I believe that it is essential that I put on record my feelings on this issue very briefly. I was part of the unanimous decision of the committee in relation to three of the variations spoken to by Mr Lamont and Mr Kaine.
I was also part of the decision on the West Belconnen issue. I would like to put on the public record, for the sake of the whole of the community - not just Ms Szuty - that I do not consider that I have treated this issue any differently to any other issue that I consider within the realm of the Assembly work or
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