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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4737 ..

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! We have one amendment before us. We are considering Mr Humphries's amendment. Perhaps you can seek leave at a later stage to move your amendments.

MS McRAE: All right. I foreshadow that I will be moving the amendments circulated in my name, specifically to enable the process to go on and also to address the very concerns that have been raised publicly, and to put on the public agenda the type of consultation that clearly people do want to ensure happens. I had no concern that this public consultation was not happening. I do understand preliminary assessments. They require a mandatory public consultation process. In the process of this lease being granted, a preliminary assessment was to be had.

The motion before us today requires more than perhaps a preliminary assessment would have required in terms of public consultation. I have no problem in putting forward for public test, for my edification as well as for all the people who are concerned, how the options that are being considered do deal with the Manuka car park, and do deal best with the needs of the Manuka traders, the users of Manuka shops, the local residents and the traders in the surrounding shopping areas, and take account of the evaluation check sheet for major retail development applications. I have no problem with that being tested. I think it is probably a very good idea. But I do not see that because that needs to be done we need to put a stop to the expressions of interest.

As a consequence, I think we should incorporate those concerns into what would have been the public consultation process anyway through the preliminary assessment; to have some sort of public statement of how the proposal meets the tests, or how the options that are proposed meet the tests, that are being set by the Assembly, if the Assembly so agrees. I do not think it will do anything much to disadvantage or to advantage the current process. It will just add to the pool of information before us that guides the Minister when he is making his decision. In most cases most of the issues raised by Ms Horodny's motion were going to be part of the type of assessment that the Minister would have had to have made before he granted the lease to the successful bidder.

Again, if the redevelopment is to go ahead, Ms Horodny was suggesting that it needs a variation to the Territory Plan. I take the Minister's advice that it does not. Even if a variation is not needed, the Assembly may as well have a look at these options. In a sense, that is what the Minister did with the McKellar site. He brought back the preliminary environment report. He offered it to the Assembly members to make comment on and he is now going away, presumably, to make his decision about the lease. As I see it, this is a parallel process. All we are actively seeking to do, as I see it, with my proposed amendments, Ms Horodny's motion as it stands and Mr Humphries's amendment, is to ensure that all the information that the public seems to want is there; that it is available for scrutiny; that it offers the type of analysis that is clearly being asked for; that it starts to reassure members that, if it is going to have a massive and adverse effect on the rest of Canberra, at least someone has had some process of evaluating it. I do not think that, but I am happy to have evidence put before me to at least make me concerned about it.

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