Page 208 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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Ms Ellis says that she went into this inquiry because she knew so much about community opinion, and then she says that really her only source of information was the report that was done previously which was one of the documents which Mr Moore's committee had a look at the basis of, so I do not know what community opinion she was aware of before she went in there. Even she says that she was surprised that this building looks like a 1950s model building. There is nothing down there when you drive up to it. I see that Mr Moore is starting to squirm a bit now and he wants to intrude into the debate. When Mr Moore delivered the report to the Assembly, he said that this building "is of a post-1950 type and there are questions over whether or not that should remain". Mr Moore does not even know whether the building is worth retaining after a so-called committee of inquiry.
Mr Moore: That is right; the post-1950 part of the building.
MR KAINE: You did not define the bit that is not post-1950s. In other words, your report did nothing whatsoever to clarify the issue. This enlightens me no further than I was enlightened before you conducted this so-called inquiry. As I said before, I think you got down there, you discovered that it was a bit hot and so you thought, "How fast can we get out of this mess? We will just write a quick report and throw it all back on the Government". That adds nothing to the debate.
I could go into this in some more detail, but then he gets down to the site. In section 3 he does eventually get down to the homestead and the buildings and starts talking about boundaries and the like. He makes this interesting comment:
Beyond the homestead, the site is an uninviting place for general recreation and community use such as bush walking.
Who on earth would go bushwalking down there, I do not know. He continues:
It is unmown and heavily infested with the noxious weed Patterson's curse as well as large clumps of feral plants including hawthorn.
You can fix that now; you have another thing going on feral plants, so you can have another go at that issue that you failed to address here. You do not mention the fact that there are some brown snakes down there either. I understand that you did a quick retreat when you discovered a brown snake on the property and that maybe that is why you did not look sufficiently closely at the rest of it.
In the end, the committee concludes - - -
Mr Moore: In the end, Bill Stefaniak has decided to make a run on it to get a few votes for this election.
MR KAINE: You have already had one say and I presume that you will get another one in a minute; you will try to defend yourself but in the end you do not even define what you believe is the area of land that should be preserved. You say that already it has been overborne by development around it and you are now saying that there should be more development on it, but in the end leave it to the Government to make up their minds. So we do not know what is heritage; we do not know how much ground should be retained around it. There is even some question about whether elements of the place have any heritage value at all.
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