Page 1541 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 18 May 1993
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which replaces 1,100 policies of the former NCDC, requires an extremely comprehensive document. To ensure that the widest and best informed views about the report are able to be made by the media, it is proposed that we provide these copies on an embargoed basis. The committee will determine to whom they are given and the conditions upon which they are given. In general, that will include a requirement that the report not be reproduced, transmitted, distributed or in any way broadcast prior to the formal tabling of that report in the Assembly.
MR KAINE (8.39): Madam Speaker, what the chairman of the Planning Committee is suggesting is a little unusual, but it is quite clear that the plan, when it is tabled, will generate a great deal of public debate. I can see the point that, when that debate begins, it is better that it be informed debate and that it get off on the right foot rather than have some uninformed and perhaps destructive comment made in the early stages. For that reason, although it is an unusual step, I support Mr Lamont's motion.
MS SZUTY (8.39): I also indicate to the Assembly that this motion has my full support. I believe that it is unusual for a standing committee of the Assembly to request that copies of a report be made available to the media before the report is tabled. I think this is such a significant event for the Assembly that the motion is very sensible, and I support it wholeheartedly.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
CANBERRA IN THE YEAR 2020 STUDY
Ministerial Statement and Papers
Debate resumed from 25 February 1993, on motion by Ms Follett:
That the Assembly takes note of the papers.
MR KAINE (8.40): Madam Speaker, in looking at the document tabled by the Chief Minister some days ago, on first impressions one might assume that, because there is plenty of quantity, there is also plenty of quality. However, a careful review of that paperwork raises some questions about where this study is going. Ms Szuty made a quite long rejoinder to these documents the other week and she raised some questions about it. One of them, for example, was the question of the population projections where, even after decades of experience in population projections, we still cannot get it right. An interesting comment was made to me the other day about the fact that there are different projections of population in different papers and that we cannot seem to get it right. It was that at least our variances are getting closer. I would have thought we would have been past the stage where our variances were getting closer and we could be getting some fairly accurate projections.
My concerns about this study stem from some fairly fundamental points. In a publication issued not long ago by the Commission for the Future called 21C, an article by Martha Garrett makes some interesting comments. When you read this you discover that there is no reason for people in the ACT to start this study from a vacuum. It notes, for example, that in 1992 there were some 75 teams in
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