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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 182 ..

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister): Mr Speaker, I ask that the presentation of this Bill be postponed to a later hour this day.

MR SPEAKER: Is leave granted to postpone it to a later hour?

Mr Moore: I think the Chief Minister should explain why the Deputy Chief Minister is so slack. All right; leave is granted.

Leave granted.

MS McRAE (10.34): I move:

That:

(1) the Planning and Environment Committee undertake a wide-ranging inquiry into the future route of the John Dedman Parkway;

(2) this inquiry should take into account the results of the current Maunsell study, the Government's response to it, other transport inquiries held in the ACT, the impact of the proposal on other arterial roads and other relevant matters;

(3) the Committee announce the formal terms of reference of the inquiry and the date of reporting during the May Assembly sittings.

This is a relatively straightforward motion. It is more or less the formality to put into place what the Assembly agreed yesterday. As I said yesterday, this inquiry will enable the Planning and Environment Committee to be a forum for all the people who are concerned about the implications of the John Dedman Parkway study and the future eventuality of the parkway to air their concerns. In the next month or so, in the committee we will be able to formulate the terms of reference to ensure that the complete range of issues is able to be looked at in a way that the community feels is fair and wide ranging.

As I pointed out yesterday, and as the Minister pointed out yesterday, I accept that a lot of work has been done on this parkway over a period of nearly 10 years now - from the original plans, to the notions of where it might go, to the current studies, to the joint parliamentary committee studies, and so on. But a lot of that work is not informing current public debate, and I think that this inquiry that we are proposing today will enable those issues to be put before the public and reaired - exasperating as that may be to some, but of profound importance, I believe.

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