Page 4419 - Week 14 - Thursday, 1 December 1994
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MR DE DOMENICO (11.05): I listened very carefully to what Ms Szuty and the Chief Minister said. The Opposition will not be supporting Ms Szuty. That is not to say that the Opposition is 100 per cent sure that the $3m expended is going to be good value for money. When I say that the Opposition is not 100 per cent sure, I do not think anybody can be 100 per cent sure. At least, yesterday the Opposition did speak again to representatives of the high-tech organisations; we had them in and we spoke to them at length. The couple of companies that I spoke to have assured us that they have every intention of moving into this area, should it go ahead. They said that they would do so for very simple reasons. Fern Hill was mentioned in the debate. The reason why they have not gone into Fern Hill, to this stage, is that they could not afford to. It is as simple as that. They did say also that they did not want any bells and whistles; they wanted a high-tech park that provided them with cheap rent, at a location which enabled them to go on with their business. Any high-tech business, as we are all aware, needs specifically to be free of dust and all sorts of other things; and they believe that this area would provide such an environment.
It was unfortunate that the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee was denied access, at that stage, to a copy of the Coopers and Lybrand report. We did ask for one. We did ask Dr Adrian for one, and he did say to all members of the committee that the report was commercial-in-confidence. He said that we could not have it. Yesterday the Chief Minister realised that all of it was not commercial-in-confidence and kindly made a copy available. It is unfortunate that - perhaps in the language of politics - people do get carried away about the potential to the town in terms of jobs created and whatever. We would all hope that 25 companies do come into this area and that there would be 800 extra jobs created as well. I do recall, when asking the same question of Dr Adrian in the PDI Committee, that he did confirm that most of the jobs in this area would be in existing, established companies that physically move from one area to another.
There is one other point that I would like to make. I concur with the Chief Minister on this one. I questioned at length the representative of the Queanbeyan City Council, and the representative of the Queanbeyan City Council said to us, "Why has not the ACT taken into account the views of the Queanbeyan City Council before it went ahead and made a decision?". My first question to that representative was, "Can you please tell me the last time that the Queanbeyan City Council took the ACT into account before they made a decision which may have had an adverse effect on the ACT?". There was dead silence, quite obviously. Once again, the Queanbeyan City Council's argument was not one that I took a liking to - as Mr Berry, I am sure, will recall. I did not take a great liking to it, because it made no sense. The fact that the Queanbeyan City Council had allocated an area of land for this very same purpose and it had not been taken up, to me, is a superfluous argument to what we are talking about. Maybe no-one took up that invitation because the land was too dear, the rent was too dear or for various other reasons.
As I said, the Opposition still is not 100 per cent sure about all the things that we have been fed about future prospects. However, taking everything into account, if it increases the number of jobs even by one or two, we will agree to it, Ms Szuty. As I recall, you are the person that has come into this place time and again and put pressure on both sides of the house by saying, "Let us do things that are likely to increase jobs". This may do so.
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