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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (26 February) . . Page.. 486 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

that the whole of Canberra would not support a situation where we will finally have the National Museum. Think of all the jobs involved in building that museum and all the jobs involved in the Kingston foreshore redevelopment and, from that time on, all the tourists who will inevitably come to Canberra to see the museum and to enjoy the waterfront development.

I present the following paper:

Planning and Environment - Standing Committee - Report No. 23 - Further report on the Acton/Kingston land swap - Government response - ministerial statement, 26 February 1997.

I move:

That the Assembly takes note of the paper.

MS McRAE (4.04): I will speak only briefly, because I realise people are anxious to get on with the next debate. I thought I might use this opportunity to pose a couple of questions to the Chief Minister to seek clarification about things that are not quite clear in this report. Chief Minister, I believed that in the original land swap we were going to hang on to the hospice and the hospital and then negotiate for the takeover in 1999, and that the current lease would apply. If I am reading the detail right, Acton is going to be handed over after the Commonwealth has given a lease agreement for them to stay until 1999. That is quite a shift in emphasis. I wonder what caused that, why it is that that has been done and what we are getting in return. The Commonwealth has given two nice little bits of land somewhere else in return for the land that they will now have from the hospice and the cottage that were not part of the original agreement. We really need to know what has happened to cause that change of intent from the original agreement.

The other part that is not clear - perhaps I am misreading it, although I do not think so - is the very curious sentence in the letter from the Hon. Warwick Smith. He says:

With regard to the issue of contamination on the Kingston Foreshore site, both the Commonwealth and the Territory have conducted professional environmental testing and are aware of the extent of contamination found and the requirements of environmental clean-up.

Then he says:

The Territory will be responsible for the clean-up on its land to this extent.

As far as I understood, our land is Acton Peninsula. We do not have any - - -

Mrs Carnell: Most of the land at Kingston is ours as well.

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