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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4836 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

consider to be a car park around the other side. It is being used as a car park, but it already has a number of other uses which may well be consistent with what Mr Humphries allows. I am just speaking off the top of my head. I am happy to be corrected. As I recall, the other lease includes theatres and so on.

Mr Humphries: Yes, but it has changed, Michael. It is half now.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, if Mr Humphries wants to correct something, there are standing orders that provide him with the ability to do that.

I think it is very important at this stage that we do not send a message to Lend Lease, or anybody else, that there is a piece of land upon which you have a right to do a particular task and you might be able to use it for something else.

Mr Humphries: I am not doing that.

MR MOORE: I am just clarifying that that ought not to be the case. What we should have is a situation where the Minister, appropriately, under the Act, goes through a process - I have not been critical of this process yet - that approves an expansion of retail space.

Now it is time to criticise that process. Mr Speaker, the expansion of retail space, to an outsider looking in, is a most extraordinary thing. On the one hand, we have this Government restricting retail hours in order to protect small businesses, supposedly. On the other hand, they allow a significant expansion of retail space and - - -

Mr Humphries: We have halved it.

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries says, "We have halved it". No, you have not halved it.

Mr Humphries: Yes, we have.

MR MOORE: What you have done is halve what they proposed. There is a very big difference. The logical thing for anybody else to do from now on - knowing that you are going to say, "We halved what they proposed" - is simply to put in an ambit claim.

Mr Humphries: That is not the way it works, Michael, and you know that.

MR MOORE: I accept what you are saying. I accept that you have halved what they proposed. I am not debating that. I think that is a step in the right direction. To allow expansion of retail space, as you are doing, is clearly going to have an impact on small business and the small retail centres.

Ms McRae: They are going to have more of them in there. They are actually going to have greater opportunities. Get your facts straight, Mr Moore.

MR MOORE: I hear a voice from the wilderness over there - one of the few left - making some comments, Mr Speaker.

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