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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1580 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

They cannot afford the cost of relocating". Well, they might not be able to afford to stay where they are either. If the customers are not going to go into their businesses, then they have to do something else. That might sound a bit hard, but that is the world we live in. If their business is going to fail in its present location, then they have to consider relocating. It is a decision that business people make every day - big ones, I might add, as well as small ones.

I do not support Ms Horodny's motion. I think it is fairyland stuff. It will solve no problem. It will merely, as I say, impose the dead hand of government. Where did we get the expertise to make this decision? Who amongst us has ever run a small business, with the exception of the Chief Minister? I know that Ms Horodny has not, and I know that I have not. I have been involved in some big ones but I have never been involved in a small one, except in waiting for the big one to become a small one, which is what is happening in some of our suburbs now. I think Ms Horodny would do well to wait for a few days because it is my understanding - and I am sure that Lucy Horodny is as well aware of this as I am - that the Government has been working for some months on a retail strategy for Canberra and is about to table it in the next few days. Why could she not have waited, rather than make this grand gesture in the hope of making some political point and getting her picture on the front page of the Canberra Times? Why could she not have waited for a week to see what the Government intends to do, instead of trying to cut across the bows with a salvo like this, which will do more harm than good to small business in Canberra? I repeat: I will not be supporting this motion.

MR SPEAKER: I am particularly pleased to welcome Year 6 of Garran Primary School to the Assembly today as part of their study of Australian parliaments. We welcome you to your Assembly.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (10.59): I have to repeat the concerns which Mr Kaine has stated in this place about this motion and repeat what I said on radio this morning, which is that this response to what is obviously a very serious problem in the ACT is a grossly simplistic one and the problem deserves, frankly, more time and effort by every member of the Assembly than is exhibited by this motion. Ms Horodny essentially is trying, in a sense, to make administrative decisions from the crossbenches. She is entitled to express a view about the way in which the policy should head, but a decision about which particular development deserves to be approved and which one does not is, with the greatest respect to Ms Horodny, not a decision she can make from the position she sits in; it is a decision that ought to be made, with respect, by the Executive of the Territory or possibly the Executive with the advice of an Assembly committee or something of that kind. The decision should be made on a case-by-case basis, not on the basis that we think some proposals for development of town centres are not good; therefore, put a blanket on all of them for the next five years. That puts a restriction on for not only the life of this Assembly but almost all the life of the next Assembly as well. That does not work.

I think the problem with Ms Horodny's approach is exhibited by the simple mistakes of fact that she has listed in this place. First of all, she claims that the Liberal Party has supported in the past, or was about to support, a moratorium on the expansion of town centres. I challenged Ms Horodny to table the document which indicated that. Table it, Ms Horodny; you have had your chance. I think she will find that that is not the case.

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