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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2762 ..

MR DE DOMENICO: The first letter I got was on 23 July from the residents group. They should have had a response from me within about a week. It so happens that that letter was mislaid, misplaced or whatever - I do not know what happened to it; but they had a second response from me by 26 August. We have to get that on the record as well.

Without wasting the Assembly's time, on reading the file in front of me now, I believe that there is no reason why this should not be referred to the committee. I have had a word to Mr Moore, albeit very briefly, who assures me that he will expedite this issue as much as he can. The Government is on record on this, by the way. We were accused of not spending enough on public works and not creating jobs, and Nudurr Drive was one of the issues we decided to expedite. Notwithstanding that there are certain residents in that area - - -

Mrs Carnell: There are lots of residents in Palmerston who want it.

MR DE DOMENICO: Exactly. There are certain residents who are against our going ahead with Nudurr Drive where it is; but there are many more residents, I can assure the Assembly, who are of a different opinion. They think it is a great public works project and they want it to go ahead as soon as possible. That being the case, I am quite happy to refer it to Mr Moore's committee; but let us not get to the situation where, on the one hand, the Government is criticised over and over again for not spending enough on public works and, on the other hand, it is criticised when it does attempt to spend some money on public works, as requested by the community. That is why governments are here and oppositions are on the other side, I suppose. I look forward to the committee's quick look into this matter so that we can go ahead and build the residents the road they want.

MR MOORE (11.21): Ms Follett has spoken to me and I have discussed this with other members of the committee and we believe that we can expedite it reasonably quickly. Indeed, it has been our practice to ensure that the range of inquiries before us are dealt with as quickly as possible, and I believe that we have been very successful at that. There are some things that, for various reasons, take longer to deal with, and that is the nature of the democratic process and the nature of consultative processes.

One of the interesting comments I heard Mr De Domenico make was that there had been no inquiries of the Planning Authority but assurances had been given by real estate agents. That is one of the things I checked with the action group when they met with me. They said that they were prepared to provide statutory declarations that they had been to the Planning Authority and had been given assurances by various workers within the Planning Authority as to how this drive is going to affect their back fences. They were under an impression, and they are prepared to give a statutory declaration on this, about the sort of protection they were going to receive.

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