Page 4539 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 14 December 1993
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Here we are 14 months later, and what has happened? It has all disappeared. Nothing is being done about any of the work that was put into these things. I was interested at the time when I received the letter, and somebody else made a reference to it. I was invited. The letter said:
I am writing to invite you to participate in this week's charrette.
At the time I wondered what it was.
Mr De Domenico: It sounds like a Green senator.
MR KAINE: There have been various interpretations of the word. We now discover that it means, in fact, that we all sit around and talk but we do not do anything. Presumably, that is what the word "charrette" means. It is just a forum where we can all get everything off our chest, but do not expect anything to happen.
I suspect that the community is getting a bit worried about this site, and I can understand why. All these competing views are being put forward and people, no doubt in their own minds, are carving up the peninsula for their own particular desires for the future, quite selfishly, while the people who should be making the decision and determining the course of action are sitting on their hands doing nothing. I do not know what they are waiting for. I do not know what the Minister is waiting for. I ask the Minister whether he has ever got in his car, driven across to the other side of the lake and had a talk to any Federal politician like Mr Langmore, or Senator Margaret Reid, or any of the people that are involved with planning issues at the Federal parliamentary level? Has he had a talk to them about these issues and said, "How about we have a decision? How about we have an indication from you, the Commonwealth, as to what you intend to do?"? I guarantee that he never has.
We have an interesting interchange going on year after year between the two planning authorities which, I submit, is more a debate about jurisdiction than anything else, not a debate about what the piece of ground might be used for, and it gets us nowhere. I take issue with some of the things that the Minister said. He said that this was a designated area and nobody would disagree with that. Quite frankly, I do. He noted that it is Territory land, but then he went on about how important a piece of land this is in the context of the development of the Territory, and the Commonwealth has to tell us what we can use it for, and that is why it is designated land. I do not agree. Why do we have to have the Commonwealth tell us what that piece of land can be used for? It is Territory land. It was given to us, as the Minister rightly points out, because it had an operating hospital on it; but other pieces of land were given to us because they had operating facilities on them too and the Commonwealth does not pretend to tell us what we can do with them. Simply because it is sitting on the edge of the lake there is this strange view that we should allow the Commonwealth to tell us what we can and cannot do with it.
Mr Wood: I am afraid that it is written in.
MR KAINE: It is about time you did something about changing it, Minister. You are the Minister. You are a member of this Government. I said that this is becoming a monument to government inactivity and the inability of governments, particularly this one, to make a decision about anything.
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