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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4835 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

My evaluation discusses some options Lend Lease have to achieve this in terms of their current preferred design; but it would obviously be a matter for Lend Lease to decide whether this approval would involve their seeking to change the proposed layout for the centre.

I have also recommended that the second stage, including the proposed discount department store, be approved only when the population in the primary and secondary trade areas reaches 207,000, which at this stage is not expected until early next century. As retail expansion is currently increasing at a faster rate than population, I have, however, indicated that if the population target is not reached by 2002 the target should be reviewed in the light of existing retail expansion at that time.

I commend both evaluations to the Assembly, knowing that they reflect a careful balance between the Government's responsibility to the broader community to protect the retail hierarchy, and so promote accessibility, convenience and choice, and the need to ensure that rigid and inflexible decisions do not inhibit the retail market from responding to improvements in our economic circumstances.

MR MOORE (4.07): Mr Speaker, I rise specifically to address my comments to the development of the Lend Lease proposal in Woden. I think it is very unfortunate that what the Minister seems to be indicating to the proponents is that they can go ahead and carry out a restricted development - I accept that Mr Humphries has not said, "Yes, you can go ahead and do all your development" - on a piece of land which one would have to question is theirs, in this sense. In terms of our leasehold system, it is not their land for this kind of use. It is their land, and has been for only two years, for use as a car park, into which they were committed to put large sums of money.

Mr Speaker, I tabled some documents in this Assembly last week, at the end of the last sitting, that identify quite specifically those large sums of money. Members can look at those documents. You, Mr Speaker, indicated that specific financial clauses should be struck out of those documents, in the public interest. I have not commented on those figures, apart from one on which I asked a question before you had indicated that you were going to do that, Mr Speaker. What we have is a situation where this community allowed Lend Lease to take control of a piece of land - - -

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am aware of Mr Moore's concerns about the car parking at Woden; but my advice is that the approval I have given does not necessarily carry with it the approval to use the car parks that Mr Moore refers to. It is possible that this approval could be carried through in full without touching the car parks that Mr Moore is concerned about. Therefore, what he is saying is irrelevant to this debate.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, my comments are not irrelevant to the debate at all. We are talking about an approval for a supermarket. We are talking about a proposal for how to implement this development, which has been shown publicly to spread over a car park. I will take into account Mr Humphries's point that, indeed, it may progress in a different way from that. I will elaborate on that point. Lend Lease has what most of us

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