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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2219 ..

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, I would like to address the issue that the Government and the Minister have now raised, of putting in place a compromise which suggests a lowering of the cost of an annual pass for visitors in a car to $10 and the provision of other facilities for families and children. (Extension of time granted) Even though there are not many members here now, I would suggest to those who are listening that, if the Government thinks it can get support for this fee by lowering the annual pass rate, it should think again. Once the fee is in place, there is only one direction in which this fee will head, and that is up. While it may seem relatively inexpensive now, experience with fees in other parks has always demonstrated that it will be continually raised over a period of time. What may appear to be inexpensive now will almost certainly not be in two, three, five or 10 years' time. Then the cost to families and to other people who wish to access this facility will be considerable.

Once you support this fee and put it in place, you give de facto support for its maintenance and for its continual rise. Only by saying now that entry fees to nature reserves should be opposed will you be able to make sure that all people in our community can enjoy access to this important part of our natural environment and, more importantly, have the ability to experience Australian native wildlife at close hand. Mr Speaker, that is Labor's commitment in opposition to this fee, and I urge other members to make that commitment also.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning): Mr Speaker, I seek leave, under standing order 46, to make a personal explanation.

MR SPEAKER: Proceed.

MR HUMPHRIES: I thank members for their indulgence. Mr Speaker, Mr Corbell has suggested that I was aware that the Commonwealth had attached conditions to the grant of $200,000 to the ACT which would render it unlikely or inconceivable that the Commonwealth would withdraw its funding if the ACT was not in a position to invest money in Tidbinbilla. Let me say, first of all, Mr Speaker, that the investment Mr Corbell talks about is in the coming year's budget. Of course, there is already a decision by the Government, which has been tested today, to raise fees at Tidbinbilla. If it were to be the case that it was not possible to proceed with those fees, then obviously priorities would have to be reconsidered. That might well lead to an incapacity to deliver on the things that Mr Corbell said were a precondition of the grant of Commonwealth moneys.

The second point, Mr Speaker, is that the ACT Government put a submission to the Commonwealth in which it mentioned certain things that it believed were going to happen. If subsequently those things do not happen, then the submission from the ACT on which the Commonwealth based its decision clearly has changed and it is obviously open to the Commonwealth, on that basis, to reconsider its position.

Mr Berry: Mr Speaker, standing order 46 requires - - -

MR HUMPHRIES: I have finished anyway.

MR SPEAKER: I uphold your point of order anyway, Mr Berry.

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