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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1646 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

By the same token, neither should it be just a holus-bolus knocking down of everything. We need to assess those buildings to determine what the actual costs are in renovating versus rebuilding. In the interests of public accountability, I believe that we must be absolutely certain that we are getting the best value for our dollar in this regard.

MS McRAE (11.05): If ever there were justification for the committee's inquiry and the whole process of review of this matter, it seemed to me that it was more than apparent in the Chief Minister's response to this report. She was a little put out, may I say, by the fact that the report seemed to further delay her wondrous vision for the Kingston foreshore. It was a most unfortunate and intemperate response, because what this committee did find was a range of questions that did need to be asked and a high level of community concern about the land swap in the first place. The range of questions that were asked were highly sensible and highly logical and pointed out the map of detail that had to be followed through before a successful outcome could be found.

As I came to the inquiry I constantly had to ask myself: Why this obsession with the Kingston foreshore? There are plenty of other beautiful places in Canberra that could do with an injection of development and a bit of energy and time: The Griffin Centre, which was on the books years and years ago and which nobody has ever looked at again; the Yarralumla Brickworks which, again, was on the books years and years ago, and never happened; North Watson, may I say, which, if that development had gone ahead, would have been beneficial to the Territory. There is a range of possible places where exciting developments of this kind could have taken place. I just wonder what the obsession with Kingston foreshore is.

I cannot help but feel that the Commonwealth are rubbing their hands with glee at getting rid of this dirty place that they no longer want, have any use for nor have any attraction to. The Commonwealth know full well that it is riddled with difficulties that they do not want to deal with. This report further highlighted all those concerns that were apparent in the community and among people who had any sense about what was actually on Kingston and, what is worse, what we are losing on Acton. What we saw in the run of this report was that, particularly when the new Government came in, there was no firm plan for Acton Peninsula; there was no real consideration about what needed to go there. There had been a minimum of discussion with the Canberra community. What we heard and saw throughout the committee's inquiry was a range of people desperately concerned about what would happen to what they saw as the most beautiful piece of land in the ACT.

This report highlights that those concerns are still there and that so many more people are even more concerned, now that the new Federal Government will not make a categorical statement about what is to go on Acton Peninsula. We saw last week, throughout question time, a great deal of handwringing, accusation, general finger pointing and carrying on about my fairly legitimate process of asking questions about exactly what the Commonwealth's contribution was going to be to the clean-up of Kingston. Well, we soon found out.

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