Page 1425 - Week 05 - Thursday, 13 May 1993
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the work, but will be supported in the future, as they are now, by the Emergency Service. There is no proposal that the Emergency Service take over the bush rescue role of the police - at least, none that I am aware of, that the assistant commissioner is aware of or that the director of Fire and Emergency Services is aware of.
No doubt, Madam Speaker, in an organisation as enthusiastic as the ACT Emergency Service is, there are officers who would like to be given that role. I can understand their enthusiasm and their pride in that job that would cause them to bid to take over that role, but I must disappoint them - if that is their view - by saying that the police will continue to have that prime role and responsibility, but they will be supported, as always, by those fine volunteers. Members opposite in the Liberal Party who were chortling when Mr Humphries was reading out a request for resources should think about that, because those people give up their time and they should be resourced.
Mr Humphries: Madam Speaker, I seek leave to table the document I read from.
Leave granted.
Housing Development - Braddon
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to Mr Wood as Minister for Planning. Mr Wood, you may recall that I wrote to you on 11 March suggesting possible terms of reference for an inquiry into the process followed over approval of flats on section 22, Braddon, about which you have done nothing. I now notice in an advertising supplement in the Valley View that you have appointed Cannons' Mr Efkarpidis to the Floriade board of management. This is the same Mr Efkarpidis who is so clearly operating in breach of his lease in Hume. I also note that the Watson community is meeting tonight about the inappropriateness of the process and is questioning figures on the development in North Watson. When will you begin to get control of planning, and are you really sure that you and your department are competent to take over land development?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I will deal first with section 22. The inquiry that Mr Moore sought was one that initially I had no objection to. I had a conversation with him about it in his room. We discussed in reasonable terms what an inquiry might do, and I invited Mr Moore to be a little more precise and to put something on paper. The next day, I think it was - he did it very quickly - I got his letter of about three pages which opened the matter up completely. The letter was about something quite different to the sort of inquiry which I thought he and I had discussed the day before. It was not, in my view, simply an inquiry into what happened with section 22. It was an inquiry into about a dozen related aspects of planning and lease management in the ACT. On that basis I have taken no action at this stage.
I might indicate that the matter is still not necessarily concluded, because I am aware that some people in the community have sought, through freedom of information, to look at the paper on the proposal. If they were to come to me and make some specific points about it, then I would obviously listen to them.
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