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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1653 ..

Mr Humphries: But Paul Keating wanted it. He is your idol, is he not? You worship the ground he walks on, do you not?

MR BERRY: That is a bit of an overstatement. Mr Humphries said that he could not see a clear argument which would convince him that the deal was not a good one. I will give you a little sample. Have a look at recommendation No. 2. It goes on to say:

- the existing land swap gives the Commonwealth Government a completely cleared site of about 13 hectares at Acton while the ACT Government ...

Mrs Carnell: Yes, that you can do nothing with.

MR BERRY: That is not true, and you know it. It is useful to us.

MR SPEAKER: Order! It being 45 minutes after the commencement of Assembly business, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 77.

Motion (by Mr Humphries) agreed to:

That the time allotted to Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.

MR BERRY: This recommendation says:

- the existing land swap gives the Commonwealth Government a completely cleared site of about 13 hectares at Acton while the ACT Government gets about 11 hectares of land at Kingston, half of which is occupied indefinitely by a Commonwealth Government body ...

We give away to the Commonwealth 13 hectares of the best land in the Territory for around five hectares of something like the worst. We have heard all this nonsense about the Kingston foreshore. It has nothing to do with the foreshore. It is a street and a park to the foreshore from what is essentially industrial land. It is not a proper description of the site to call it the Kingston foreshore, because it is not the Kingston foreshore. Mrs Carnell came along and stitched up an early deal. As my colleague Mr Wood said, she was keen to look as though she was doing something early in the piece and agreed to this deal which the ACT will be paying for for a long time.

There has been a lot said about lost jobs. If I were Mrs Carnell I would not talk too much about lost jobs because over the period that she has been Chief Minister we have added about 2,300 people to the unemployed list here in the Territory. We have all heard of the recent situation as a result of the Commonwealth's position on top of the havoc that she has created here, and the Territory is not in for a good time, on the face of it. That is the regrettable situation which has come about, but it is one that we will have to deal with.

You can sing all the praises you like about the Kingston site, but where is the demand going to be for the quality buildings that one would want to put on such a site? Of course, there would be a few developers around who are quite smart and who would like to take it off our hands at the right price when things are at the bottom and sit on

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