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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1063 ..

MS HORODNY: I will spare the Chief Minister's voice. My question is not for the Chief Minister; it is for Mr Humphries. Mr Humphries, yesterday you put out a media release boasting $1m for conservation projects. You state that this $1m will go to six major conservation and Landcare projects. Reading through the release, one of the six projects is a road upgrade through Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve and, going through the paperwork, I found that the costing for that was $185,000. Can you explain why you have taken $185,000 for a road upgrade and put that into the environment budget? Is this an indication of future environment budgets and the sorts of things we can expect to see in environment budgets?

MR HUMPHRIES: The fact is that the Government does need to engage in a number of things as a government to be able to facilitate improvement to our environment. If a road is going through an ordinary part of the Territory - if we are building a road from Calwell to Conder or wherever it might be - naturally enough that is a matter that falls within Mr Kaine's portfolio and ought to be dealt with as an ordinary road exercise. If we are building a road or upgrading a road or whatever in a part of the Territory such as a nature reserve, the only purpose of which is to facilitate access to an environmental asset like Tidbinbilla, I think it is quite reasonably treated as spending on the environment. My understanding is that that has always been the case in the ACT. Every government, including Mr Berry's Government, included - - -

Mr Berry: I never owned one.

MR HUMPHRIES: You might want to deny it, but you were part of one at one stage. Every government has included such works within the environment budget. I have to say, though, that I have nothing to apologise about for spending on the environment. I have to reject very comprehensively your own approach towards costing of matters in the environment. You have put out a release, I notice, talking about a $1m cut in the environment budget by the ACT Government, based on a misunderstanding about the figures. You have attributed the contaminated sites program having ended as a cut in the budget. The thing for which the money was put aside is no longer required. That is why we are not spending the money anymore. It is not a cut to the budget. If I were you, I would check very carefully before I made any assertions about what is being spent on the environment or not spent on the environment.

MS HORODNY: That is an appalling answer, I must say. Roads are now part of the environment budget.

MR SPEAKER: We are not grading answers, Ms Horodny; we are grading roads. Ask your supplementary question.

MS HORODNY: It might be a good idea to grade the answers. That one would get minus 10, I can tell you. Does this mean that in the future upgrading roads around schools will mean that the budget for that will come out of the schools budget? Is that the logic behind what you are saying?

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