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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 831 ..

MR KAINE (4.27): Mr Speaker, I must say that I am rather surprised to find the Assembly debating a foreshadowed motion that this matter go to the Planning Committee.

Mr Moore: No, we are not. We are debating the Stein report.

MR KAINE: It is a foreshadowed motion. Mostly, what everybody has said up to now was predicated on the matter going before the Planning Committee. In fact, we are debating it, whether you think we are or we are not. Mr Speaker, if this occurs, in essence the Planning Committee is going to substitute itself for the Government as the policy-making organisation of this place. It seems to me that what we have here is a report put together at great expense, at Mr Moore's request, I might add; so when he talks about how much it cost he wants to remember that it was he who instituted the thing.

Mr Moore: Trevor, you might recall that you were part of the committee that called for it.

MR KAINE: I have no difficulty with that; but it is no good now, after the event, saying, "It cost $620,000". How much money do you think you need to spend on this thing? If you did not want to spend the money you should not have asked for the inquiry. I have no compunction about spending the money because I think it was well spent.

The point is that we have this report. The Government has this report. It has 96 recommendations in it. The Government has looked at that report and it has come back with its response. To the extent that what the Government proposes to do is different from what was put to it by the Stein board of inquiry, the Government has to resolve those differences. The Government should be going out to the community and to groups that are concerned about this and saying, "This is what Stein recommended and this is what we intend to do. Do you have an opinion about that?". They can get the replies and make up their minds as to whether they still want to go that way or whether they want to stick to their guns and go their own route. Why are we trying to impose the Planning Committee in this process?

Mr Moore: To get it right.

MR KAINE: I do not believe, Mr Moore, that you are the fount of all wisdom on planning and that your judgment, which you will attempt to inject into the report that comes back here, is superior to that of the Minister.

Mr Moore: Yes, but you will inject, as you always do, in a very forceful way. There is no doubt about that. I do not see you sitting quietly by and letting me do what I like, Mr Kaine.

MR KAINE: That may be so; but it seems to me that the responsibility is that of the Minister and the Government. They have a proposal that they paid dearly for. They have said, "This is what we intend to do". Let them sort it out with, to use this new in-phrase, the stakeholders, whoever they are, and justify to the stakeholders why they want to take a different course from that proposed by the Stein inquiry. If they can persuade them that that course of action is the right one, okay; if they cannot, they have

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