Page 4538 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 14 December 1993
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the current exercise of former Justice Rae Else-Mitchell. He is now going through a process that I would encourage. Indeed, I think that could have been started upwards of a year beforehand. The process is to go out to the community and ask the community for its ideas and see how well they may conform with the broad ideas for the peninsula. The matter will continue to maintain the interest of Canberrans for quite some time. Ms Szuty's MPI is simply part of that debate.
MR KAINE (3.29): Madam Speaker, I suppose it is always timely for a member of the Assembly to bring up a subject like this because it is an important one. We could probably debate it half a dozen times during the year and, of course, we would get the same response. I was a bit disappointed in Mr Wood's response to the points put forward by Ms Szuty because he said, and I quote him, "I am not racing to a conclusion". That is an understatement if ever there was one.
Mr Wood: It is not for me to - - -
MR KAINE: I am quoting you, Minister. That is what you said. You said, "I am not racing to a conclusion". A tortoise would outpace you. The point is, Madam Speaker, that the Acton Peninsula is becoming synonymous with the view of Canberra as a bureaucratic city where nobody ever makes a decision about anything; whether it is five years or 10 years, it is of no consequence.
The Minister for Planning was correct when he said, "It is an important site". It is one on which this community places great value and because of that it is about time that we had some idea of what the bureaucrats and the politicians in Canberra intend to do with it. We talk about community consultation. How many forms of community consultation do you have to enter into, and over what period, before you have enough information to make a decision? We had an excellent document put out by the two planning authorities in 1992. It made some very useful proposals about how the land might be used and I have not heard any major complaint about their possible new land uses.
In fact, everything that has been said by the Minister today is already encompassed in here - the things that the community sees that this might be used for; the things that the ACT Government sees that it might be used for; the things that the National Capital Planning Authority considers it might be useful for; even the things that the Chief Minister said it might be used for. Her view was not consistent with the Government's view. It was obviously her own view. She put her own view to the Prime Minister, not the view of the Government obviously, and certainly not the view of the community. Everything that Ms Szuty has said about the possible uses, and all of the things that the Minister said about the possible uses, are all encompassed in there.
That was in about the middle of last year and, as a result of that, we had community collaborative workshops. A report was published as a result of those, dated 17 October 1992. Again we had a very large number of people, by the invitation of the two planning authorities, engaged in a community consultation process, a very comprehensive one, and all the issues were thrashed out, and a number of groups and their findings were recorded for posterity.
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