Page 211 - Week 01 - Thursday, 18 February 1993
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other and more creative uses for the site. We also need to be sure that we do not send out messages to the community that development will be allowed whenever and wherever an existing parcel of land is allowed to deteriorate.
While the committee has given full consideration to the issues placed before it, I feel that its first recommendation mentioned earlier, with regard to the land parcel that is currently known as the Tuggeranong Homestead, is the way to proceed, and that process should be allowed to proceed with no prejudgment of the issues. I also hope that the community and the interest groups which have demonstrated their commitment to the homestead will be kept fully informed of the intentions of the Government and its departments with regard to the future of the homestead.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.22): Madam Speaker, I wish only to indicate the process that is in place in the consideration of Tuggeranong Homestead. I think that by the time the process ends - and I do not know just when that will be; it has the potential to stop at any moment or to continue - it will certainly be a very carefully examined matter. Mr Moore's committee examined it. There has been a comprehensive heritage study. The ACT Heritage Council has passed comments. There is intense community debate on the issue, and that is good. Ahead we have an environmental statement and if we proceed beyond that - and I say "if" - we have a draft variation and all the communication that flows from that. If it proceeds beyond that it would come to Mr Moore's committee and then to the Assembly, and there could be some other things as well.
Mr Moore: Mr Lamont's committee, actually.
MR WOOD: I mean Mr Lamont's committee; thank you for that. So, whatever happens, the matter is going to be very comprehensively examined and I simply want to let that be known.
MR MOORE (11.24), in reply: In closing this debate, Madam Speaker, I rise, after Mr Kaine's comments in particular and Ms Szuty's, to defend the report of the committee. Mr Kaine does not seem to recognise that in fact it is a unanimous report of the committee and not my personal work at all. I do wonder with some curiosity whether Mr Kaine will be honest enough to let us know whether he has actually been out to the homestead as, indeed, Ms Szuty indicated that she has not; I also wonder with what authority he or she can speak, having not even been through the homestead itself.
Each member of that committee - Ms Ellis, Mr Westende and I - did take the trouble to do that and to follow the terms of reference that we had set ourselves. It seems that Mr Kaine either decided that he was not going to read the report or could not read the report. In fact, for people like Mr Kaine we actually put a picture in so that he could see what it is, and I am disappointed that he is not back here for a little rejoinder after his serve. Page 15 - and Mr Kaine can be referred to it - sets out quite clearly the area that the committee recommended should be preserved. So what he has been feeding to this Assembly is simply wrong. It is amazing how many times Mr Kaine does get things wrong.
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