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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4644 ..

Mr Moore: This is a reference group. A reference group does not sign off.

MRS CARNELL: I am sorry; this is the consultative group that actually did sign off on the document. There was Murray Northrop, Mr Ian Marjason, the mayor of Yarrowlumla Shire Council, and Professor Peter Cullen - the other Peter Cullen, who is the chair of the Centre for Freshwater Ecology at the University of Canberra. Mr Speaker, it is very hard for me to see the members of that group as Liberal Party apparatchiks.

Mr De Domenico: There is not one economic rat amongst them.

MRS CARNELL: I do not think there is one economic whatever it is amongst them, and I also do not think, Mr Speaker, that there is one member of the Liberal Party. Those people have put a lot of hard work into this document. I have to tell you, Mr Speaker, that I did not rewrite the document once, and to my knowledge none of my Ministers rewrote the document once. We believe strongly that we should be willing to put onto the table a document that came from the community, from a community-based consultative group, which is exactly what we have done.

MR MOORE (5.07): For all that, you have got it wrong. It seems to me, Mr Speaker, that part of the reason is the sort of approach that we hear from Mrs Carnell. She supposedly quotes from the 2020 report to the Legislative Assembly; but, in fact, she actually quoted from the reference group and took that quote out of context. That is the sort of thing she does all the time. She is taking it out of context. She is putting a spin on it. She is gilding the lily. This is the sort of approach we see from this Chief Minister again and again. Mr Speaker, the approach is dishonest.

Mr De Domenico: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

Mrs Carnell: It is all right.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, what I say is that the approach is dishonest. If you are taking that kind of approach it is a dishonest approach. I am not calling an individual dishonest; I am saying that this is a dishonest approach. Mr Speaker, let me explain what I mean by that. Mrs Carnell quoted about the parrots and she talked about this place as a city. Mrs Carnell knows that Canberra 2020: Vision for Prosperity, the report of the reference group, was set in a very specific style of context. They put themselves in the future and wrote in a very unusual style to try to get people thinking and responding. They start by writing this:

This is 2020. We have arrived. Back in the year 2005, we the 2020 generation accepted leadership. We lifted our aspirations from survival to thrival. You didn't have the word "thrival" in your day, and that said something about the loftiness of your ambitions and visions. Canberra had a vision of a prosperous future back in the 1990s. We are the generation which finished the job you started.

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