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Mr Wood: And of the Minister.

MR MOORE: And the intention of the Minister. So a fairly unilateral statement, “It is going to cost $3m more, according to one architect; therefore, we dismiss it”, is hardly an appropriate way to deal with a very carefully thought out recommendation of the Assembly's committee.

There were further examples, in terms of long-term strategy for control of weeds, where $400,000 was put down on one project; yet that was not put in the context of an overall control mechanism in terms of invasive plants. In fact, the Government had responded last year that they were looking to put $100,000 in over 10 years. I think that was the figure; I may have the figures wrong. But then to turn around and spend $400,000 on a specific issue for weed control, after the removal of a section of forest, I find quite extraordinary. I found it even more extraordinary because I would have expected that that would be the role of ACT Forests and that ACT Forests, having used that land, should, as a part of their normal process, if they are removing forest from land, then regenerate that land and take appropriate action, as we would demand, for example, from any mining company right across Australia. Why should ACT Forests be different? It is just a way of moving money from one section of government to another.

There are other individual issues that I could deal with, but they are in the recommendations of the committee. The fact that we had a unanimous report on this issue, that it was focused very much on the way that agencies prepared things, and that we did have a very positive reception from the Government is a very good indication that things will be done. I look forward to the comments of my colleagues on the committee and to the formal Government response to this committee's report.

MR BERRY (3.48): I would like to reinforce some of the things that my colleague Mr Moore has said. But before I do, I would also like to thank the members of the secretariat for their hard work on this report, because they were set a pretty tall task. They worked very hard. Mr Rod Power put a whole heap of work into this, at short notice, without complaint and under a great deal of pressure. He was able to replicate the thoughts of the committee members very swiftly and in an expert way. I thank him for that, and I am sure that all the other committee members do so as well.

Today we had an example of what I thought was arrogance - the contaminated sites strategic plan - in light of a matter that was part-heard before a committee of this Assembly. In relation to the decision by Mr Humphries about the cultural centre in Civic, there is a very clear position of a former Assembly committee, a former government and a former Assembly, of which Mr Humphries was part and of which most of us were part. It would have been good manners at least if discussion about this had been taken up with this Assembly committee or other parties in this Assembly to determine a way forward. No; what we were hit with in the committee was a copy of a press release from the Minister setting out his reasons for doing this. I think that that is outrageous.

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