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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1277 ..

Ms McRae: We will see.

MRS CARNELL: Okay, we will see. Thank you very much, Ms McRae. It demands an apology from Ms Reilly - not to me, Mr Speaker, but to the people who had taken her at her word and were really worried that somehow this project that they had been involved with for a long time was going to be scrapped.

Mr Speaker, in total, six houses are being built in Canberra to house people with severe disabilities. Four of those are being built under the Canberra's Own Option of Living project, the COOOL project, which will see young people and middle-aged people with disabilities who are currently living in nursing homes able to move into what will be their own homes. Two of these houses are currently being built at Macquarie.

Mr Berry: Welcome her back. You took a swipe at her when she - - -

MRS CARNELL: Oh, good. She is back.

MR SPEAKER: Order! I did not hear that answer. Where are they?

MRS CARNELL: Two of the houses are currently being built at Macquarie and the other two will be built on the old Fisher preschool site near the Fisher shops. The land is being cleared at the moment for the houses. The plans are currently going through the approval process and tenders will be called in the next couple of weeks. So it is not exactly a project that we will see about, Mr Speaker; the plans are in with the Planning Authority now. I understand that these two houses are due for completion before the end of the year. They will be a tribute to the many people from within government and the community who have worked on this project. It has been a very difficult project, Mr Speaker, because it is a unique concept. We have two houses at Macquarie that are almost complete now and land is being cleared for two houses at Fisher, the plans for which are in for approval. The tenders to build them will go out in the next couple of weeks and they will be built before the end of the year. That is not exactly a proposal that has been scrapped in favour of commercial gain, Mr Speaker.

I have to say that that is not the only blooper that Ms Reilly has managed in the past fortnight. First of all, we had the shock, horror story that the Government was phasing out rent assistance to tenants in the private market. This was a nasty Liberal Party plot, Mr Speaker. The fact is that Rosemary Follett's Labor Government started the phasing out process four years ago, Mr Speaker.

Mr Humphries: Who was that?

MRS CARNELL: Rosemary Follett's Labor Government. Some of those present, some of those over there, were part of that. They started the phasing out period four years ago. There is no doubt that we continued with that approach because it was appropriate, but it certainly was not a Liberal Party plot, Mr Speaker. You could say it was a Rosemary Follett plot, possibly, or a Labor Party plot.

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