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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3404 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

New is new; new means never having been done there before. Does it mean that everything the Government looks at that might never have been done before has to come through the Assembly? Does it mean that every poor little soul who has a new idea, like a fundraising walk or an egg-and-spoon race around Lake Ginninderra, because it has never happened before has to come to the Assembly? We have to come back to what we are here for. We are here to watch the expenditure of public money - public money spent on public works or new sports stadiums.

Mr Moore: What a limited view! Some of us are here for a lot more than that, Roberta.

MS McRAE: Some of us think they are God, Mr Moore, and I acknowledge that position to be yours and not mine. In my opinion, this is open to a wide definition, and I would like very much to hear the Government's response to this - how they intend to define it, why they would not leave it at public works or a definition around some sort of expenditure of public money. We would come back then to what it is legitimately the role of the Assembly to consult the general public about, and perhaps what it is legitimately within the scope of government to allow. The Territory Plan has tried to define a lot of those uses, as we saw the other day with the amendment to the Territory Plan for the use of recreation corridors. The definitions are often very hard to pin down in any way.

Ms Horodny has quite rightly tried to include the notion of sustainability and lack of ecological damage. Although I made light of it, I understand that drive and I think it is very important. We are not about to allow things that will destroy our environment. But we have to come back to who we are and what we are doing and what the real upset about this is. Is the real upset that Mr Moore did not know about it, or is the real upset that the Government has acted in an arrogant manner and needs to be brought to heel? In that case, what issues are legitimately the right of governments to do themselves, on what is it the right of the Assembly to be involved, and what process of consultation is necessary beyond the one that is defined?

Again, if one looks at the rules in relation to the new multipurpose sports facility, none of the rules were actually broken. As I pointed out before, this was not a new development under those rules. Does that mean that the Government does have the right to do something as dramatic as that to the lake foreshore without talking to anyone? That is at the heart of what we are talking about. If we are going to use a term like "new use", we have to try to pin it back to what we are talking about. Are we talking about public works? Are we talking about expenditure of public money? Are we simply talking about permission for a new activity? Are we talking about things that might or might not be potentially damaging to the lake foreshore, as Ms Horodny has pointed out? Are we talking about tree-chopping competitions? We do not know, and because we do not know, I would very much like to hear a further clarification of just what this entails before the Government quite clearly gives its assent to this motion.

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