Page 784 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 13 April 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I table the agreement. I go even further, because I like to help this Opposition to understand petrol pricing issues. I also table a document which is the valuation report from the Australian Valuation Office, a very independent set of valuers, which sets the rate of rental which we are charging Burmah under the licence agreement. That indicates that the recommended rate from the Australian Valuation Office is the rate we are charging. I would be delighted to take more questions about this deal, which has indeed benefited the ACT community enormously.
MRS CARNELL: I ask a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I ask the Minister: What was the reason that a second contract had to be signed on 22 November when one supposedly had already been signed on 29 October?
MR CONNOLLY: The reason was that we anticipated that what we were doing would excite vehement and hysterical opposition from entrenched interests in the ACT, as indeed it has. We see the Motor Trades Advocate, circulating to 100,000 households, saying how terrible we were. I anticipated that no expense would be spared in legal action to challenge the agreement. The original agreement was signed on 29 October. Having signed it, I said to my senior legal advisers, "I want you to go away and pull that apart. I want you to do a devil's advocate job on that because we anticipate that there may be real problems". We decided that there could have been some legal technical challenges to that first agreement, so we signed a second agreement, both of which were signed before Burmah pumped the first litre of petrol.
We were being very cautious because we knew that there would be a legal challenge. There was. The legal challenge failed. The stupid allegations that are contained in this document that somehow there was some collusion between Mr Wood and me to subvert environmental standards the Motor Trades Association know to be untrue. They ran these silly arguments in court and they withdrew their court action. They presumably did not want to throw good money after bad in a fruitless legal challenge.
They have a copy of an environmental assessment report that was done by consultants Hughes, Trueman and Ludlow entitled "Assessment Report on ACT Government Service Station, Wentworth Avenue, Kingston", commissioned by Mr Wood's department. So Mr Wood, when he had to exercise his responsibilities as Minister for the Environment was fully informed. The Motor Trades Association have that report, yet in their silly front-page story here they say, "The Minister did not seek an environmental assessment". That is simply untrue. No doubt if you want to have a look at that environmental assessment and you ask the Minister for the Environment in this open consultative Government, we would let you have a look at it. The MTAA have certainly had a look at it, but they chose not to report it.
The other foolish claim they make is that they get the site for free. As you will see in the document that has been tabled and in the Valuation Office report, the rental for the site is at a rate that is appropriate for a short-term licence for a site such as that, struck at about 2c a litre, which is about what the MTAA in their submission to the ACT working party inquiry into petrol prices said was an appropriate rate. We have allowed an offset because they are not renting - - -
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .