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MR MOORE: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Mr Stefaniak, is it true that the previous Government had set aside the $600,000 to rebuild Flynn Primary School? If that money had been set aside, why was this building not started until the school board and the Parents and Citizens Association were forced into the position where they had to go to the media and to members to get this under way?

MR STEFANIAK: To answer the supplementary question, Mr Speaker, I am amazed that, if the previous Government did set aside any money, nothing occurred until recently, because the previous Government did have some months in which to do something. However, money certainly is there now, and the facility will be built. I want it built as quickly as possible.

Local Area Planning

MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, I direct my question to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning, Mr Humphries. Given the Government's commitment to local area planning, when will a model of local area planning that is suitable to the Liberal Government be available?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I thank Ms Tucker for that question. In the media recently there have been a number of questions about the Government's approach to local area planning, and I assume that Ms Tucker is not picking up the rhetoric of the Labor Party, which has been accusing the Government of abandoning local area planning. I can assure her that that would not be a fruitful track to pursue.

The fact of the matter is that this Government has maintained, in writing, in the recent election campaign - and I do so again today - a commitment to the concept of local area planning for the development of the ACT. It is clear from one of the outcomes of the Lansdown review of residential policies that the concept of area recognition - to embrace the idea that people in a particular region or area of Canberra have a particular concern about the way in which their amenity in their suburb might be affected by planning changes - predicates a certain level of control and planning input by those people. It is, therefore, the case, as we said during the recent election campaign, that we are committed to a model of local area planning for the ACT.

The suggestion I heard in the media the other day - I think, from Mr Wood - was that we had abandoned the structures for putting in place local area planning. In fact, the local area planning unit within the Planning Authority is still in existence and will be proceeding with its work when I make a statement on planning in the Assembly later next month. I have indicated that I will be making a statement at that stage.

Mr Wood: They should have been doing it for three months.

MR HUMPHRIES: I might indicate, in taking that interjection from Mr Wood, that it took a long time to get to that stage; that Mr Wood was Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning in the former Government for 3½ long years, and the local area planning unit, which he set up to respond to this question of local communities being

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