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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1643 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

The first of those, of course, is the clearing up of the contamination of that site. There has been plenty of evidence put forward to suggest that there could be widespread contamination on the Kingston foreshore site. We do not know the nature of it, because there has never been a review carried out to determine how it is contaminated, where it is contaminated and how bad that contamination is. It is the view of the committee, and I think it is a view that the community would accept, that that land, to the extent that it is contaminated, was contaminated while it was under the control of the Commonwealth. It would be a thoughtless buyer who simply bought it without consideration of that fact. I believe, and the committee believes, that the Commonwealth has a responsibility to at least participate in the clearing up of the contamination on that site. It needs to be stated up front to the Commonwealth that this swap of land takes place only on the condition that the Commonwealth accepts its fair share of responsibility. I do not believe that that is unreasonable. I believe that the committee would not have done its job properly had we not drawn attention to that fact.

The second matter that we draw attention to in this report is the fact that there is a Commonwealth tenant there, the Government Printer. It is a quite large operation. At the present time there is no limit - and the agreement, as we understand it, prescribes no limit, no termination time - on that lease. In other words, the Government Printer can stay there forever if they wish, as we see it. Since that constitutes a very large piece of the Kingston foreshore and we want to redevelop that in the local interest, it stands to reason that it cannot be done comprehensively until the Government Printer goes. All we are saying is that there ought to be a time limit set on the tenancy of the Government Printer. We expect the Government Printer to relocate if that land is to pass to our control for redevelopment. Only then can we comprehensively redevelop it and do it properly in the public interest and in the interests of the Territory.

The third matter that we draw attention to flows from statements made by officers of ACTEW. There has been some attempt to denigrate this, as though the committee fabricated it; but, in fact, officers of ACTEW told us - and their own words are reflected in this report - that the relocation of their facilities on that site could be expected to cost many tens of millions of dollars. They are not our words; they are the words of ACTEW officials. Since ACTEW themselves could hardly put a value on it - their words were quite imprecise - we have to assume that the Government itself is no better informed and cannot put a value on it either. If we are talking about something that is going to cost tens of millions of dollars, then we had better know before we go into the deal what that entails. Is it $10m, $20m, $30m or $50m? Unless the Government sorts that out beforehand, we think it would be remiss to proceed. Those are the three qualifications that we put on proceeding with the transaction.

The Chief Minister has since told us in debates in the house that, in fact, the Commonwealth does have an obligation to assist with the clearing up of the contamination. That gets rid of one of the three problems.

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