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about the non-government organisations, they were not even addressed, although Mrs Carnell had three occasions on which to do that. I regret to say that I believe that Mr Berry's motion is very necessary, but I commend my amendments to the Assembly as a bit of a compromise position which may make for an easier passage of the motion.

MR MOORE (4.05): Mr Speaker, there is no doubt in my mind that the motion was prepared and put up in good faith. The amendments have been prepared as compromises and also in good faith. When I originally saw this motion - and Mr Osborne tells me that the same applies to him - it was prior to question time, before the Chief Minister had responded to a series of questions and in fact given a series of undertakings. Following discussions between Mr Osborne and me over the last few minutes, along with a range of other members, we believe that Mrs Carnell has actually given the undertakings that are called for in what would turn out to be the final motion and that they are in place. Mr Speaker, from my dealings with Mrs Carnell since she became Chief Minister and for that matter in the three years prior to that, I have no reason to believe that she will not stick to her undertakings. Therefore, I am prepared to accept her undertakings rather than try to tie the matter down with this motion.

Mr Berry, before putting this motion, spoke to me and I said, “Yes, I think the motion is quite a good idea”, although I have always had problems with the first line of it and I circulated an amendment. I can understand why the motion was put up. Having spoken again with Mrs Carnell, I believe that what you are trying to achieve by the motion has already been achieved and it is unnecessary for the motion to go ahead. It is a matter I still intend to pursue as chair of the committee. Mr Osborne and I have agreed that we will not support the motion.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (4.07): In speaking to the amendments, may I state again to this Assembly - I do not think I have to now for the Independents and the Greens - that we will not go ahead with any contract, with any agreement, with any tender to progress the levelling of any buildings or the demolition of any buildings on Acton Peninsula, before the committee reports and before this Assembly knows exactly what happens. Even if the committee has reported, we will make sure that this Assembly knows everything that happens with regard to the competition and with regard to any of the future of Acton or, for that matter, Kingston.

This is an incredibly important issue for this whole Assembly. It is something I have spoken about before as being very exciting. I am interested in a couple of statements from the previous Chief Minister, Ms Follett. On 19 October 1994 she said:

We certainly will be pursuing it, a land swap with the Commonwealth ...

She went on to talk about that. She then said that the future of the old Canberra hospital buildings “remains to be seen”. She conceded that they could be demolished.

Mr Humphries: But that was a Labor demolition. That is all right.


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