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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 10 Hansard (24 September) . . Page.. 3217 ..

Ms McRae: You call, "Order!". Then we listen to your order.

MR SPEAKER: Be careful, Ms McRae.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, they are all a bit precious today, and I can fully understand why. I have made it clear in the past. To answer the last part of Mr Corbell's fairly silly supplementary question with regard to this being an election ploy for the Liberal Party, we started speaking to J. Walter Thompson last year. They have done almost a full year's work now on this concept. We made it very clear quite a long time ago that we were putting half a million dollars aside for a marketing and promotion campaign for Canberra - something that Mr Corbell could not understand, if you remember at the time, because he could not understand the difference between a branding exercise and an advertising campaign. This supplementary question is showing that.

This is not an advertising campaign alone, Mr Speaker. It is not about tourism alone. This is about changing the attitude of Australians to the national capital. This is about getting Canberra on the list when businesses talk about or think about where they will expand or where they will set up their headquarters. This is a quite wide-ranging approach, not an advertising campaign in itself. That is part of it, but it is certainly not the only part. We believe strongly, and we have made this clear for a very long time, that this is what Canberra needs not just for tourism but to become the technology centre that we believe it can be - of course, Mr Speaker, those opposite do not - and to create jobs in Canberra.

MS TUCKER: My question is to the Chief Minister and concerns the possible redevelopment of the old buildings and car park bounded by Childers and Kingsley Streets and Barry Drive in Civic, commonly referred to as the ROCKS area. This area is currently tenanted by a range of community groups, such as the Environment Centre, PhotoAccess and the Canberra Pensioners Social and Recreation Club. Could you please tell us what discussions have occurred between your Government and developers regarding the redevelopment of the site into offices and associated uses, what provisions will be made for community group accommodation in this redevelopment, and what opportunities the existing community group tenants will have of influencing the proposal?

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I will take that question as Minister for Planning. I can fairly well assure the Assembly that there have been no discussions between developers and members of the Government as such about any proposal to redevelop the ROCKS site. Proposals to redevelop that site have been in concept on the table for quite some time, for many years. One only needs to visit the site to realise that the buildings are extremely run-down. The location is very eminent and it has the potential to complement the development which has gone on at the other end of Childers Street for the creation or enhancement of the School of Art, the School of Music and now the other Street Theatre, to create something of a cultural precinct along Childers Street and, at the same time, hopefully provide better accommodation for some of the community groups that presently occupy the ROCKS site.

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