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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4862 ..

Ms McRae: Good! It is about time.

MR MOORE: Ms McRae says, "Good! It is about time". I want that on the record. She says that it is about time that we did not have a planner. Now that she is the planning spokesman in the Labor Party, she is so interested in the role that she does not want to have a chief planner. She says, "Great! We have got rid of him. Let the Libs do what they want". That is the view of this so-called Labor Opposition. It is a joke.

The betrayal of Stein certainly justifies the rejection of this Bill as a whole, but rather than reflect on the vote of the Assembly, it is far better that we refer the Bill to a committee. Mr Humphries, in his speech in reply, referred to the report of Justice Stein. He said, "We have picked up most of the recommendations". I accept that that is the case. I think that there were some very positive outcomes, just as I think that there are some very positive sections of the Bill. It is on balance that the Bill is bad.

Ms McRae: Name them. There are about 755.

MR MOORE: Ms McRae challenges me to name them. Clause 32 in Mr Humphries's Bill is one. We have rejected the fundamental parts of Stein, the things that would take us forward, rather than the things that would take us back.

If we had not had Stein, Mant/Collins or the ministerial statement of 28 March 1996 on reform of planning and land management in the ACT and we had asked what the bureaucrats within the planning department wanted, what would we have come up with? I suggest to you, Mr Speaker, that this is the piece of legislation that we would have come up with, with a few modifications of some of the things that Stein came up with. By and large, the legislation is driven, as it always has been, by the department. The Minister has not stood up to the department and put his own imprimatur on the Bill. He has delivered what they wanted. He may be very comfortable about that. The problem with it is that he will continue in the same direction as have previous governments. He will wind up with the same dissent and the same community dissatisfaction. The only winners out of that, in an electoral sense, will be people like me - which is fine in terms of votes, but I have to say - - -

Mr Humphries: What are you complaining about?

MR MOORE: Mr Humphries says, "What are you complaining about?". Mr Humphries, like you, I actually believe that there are sometimes more important issues than votes. I realise that the Labor Party has difficulty in understanding that.

Mr Whitecross: About you we do.

Ms McRae: About you we do, yes.

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