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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1316 ..

Mrs Carnell: It was not.

MR MOORE: You can listen this time. This time you can just sit there and listen. The press release continued:

"This committee has wasted a whole year and still hasn't been able to come up with a final report," Mrs Carnell said.

The committee had taken a year, for very good reasons. There had been a change of government. The press release went on later:

"We need jobs in Canberra, not endless committee inquiries that come up with nothing".

She was referring to a committee which, over the year, had basically brought down 11 reports. This is the eleventh report that we have brought down, in spite of having four members on it from different groups within the Assembly. Those four members have worked particularly hard to ensure that we bring down a report about once every five weeks. Very rarely are they minor reports. To suggest that we have endless committee inquiries that come up with nothing is absolute nonsense and was misleading the people of Canberra. In the press release, the Chief Minister went on:

We can no longer afford to sit on our hands and do nothing in the face of major economic challenge. We have already commissioned a study to find if there is contamination on the Kingston site and it has been clear from the start ...

According to her press release, she did not have to wait anyway because she had already commissioned the study independent of what the committee was going to do. That kind of intemperate language does absolutely nothing to make us believe that the Government, particularly the Chief Minister, is going to take this Assembly and its committees seriously.

In fact, what the committee recommended was that the land swap agreement between the ACT and Commonwealth governments not proceed unless a series of conditions were met. It is a double negative. It can proceed, if you like, provided this series of conditions are met. They were important conditions to try to correct what had been a bad deal. The contamination was an important issue. The other issues included relocating tenants from Acton Peninsula and the future use of Acton Peninsula. There was a question about the amount of land - about 13 hectares on Acton, as against about 11 hectares at Kingston. For some reason, the Chief Minister seems to have pinned her whole Government's ability to work the economy of the Territory on Kingston. What a silly idea! We heard it today in question time. We have heard it again and again. The Chief Minister stands up and says, "You are just trying to stop everything; you are trying to delay our economy; you are trying to get rid of jobs". It is all because we have delayed the development of Kingston. It is simply not true.

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