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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (6 November) . . Page.. 3692 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

and made it a little bit easier. But you came to us 10 months after and said, "It is too hard; you have made it too hard". Really, the crocodile tears, Mr Humphries are not working. I am just disappointed that you waited so long to respond when, if you had come to us on the Legal Affairs Committee and - - -

Mr Berry: You are going to let him off, though, Ozzie, are you not?

MR OSBORNE: I am not letting him off. You could have come to us and said, "We are having trouble with this". Instead, you come into the Assembly and say, "It is all too hard, blah, blah, blah". Mr Humphries, you really disappointed me on this one. As I said, I think I am at one with you on the issue of surveillance cameras; but you needed to convince more than me, and you have not done that. If you want to make an election issue out of it, fine; but I will be reminding people that you had an opportunity to do it during the life of this Assembly, but you did not. You chose not to.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

Debate resumed from 3 December 1996, on motion by Mr Moore:

That the report be noted.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.01): Mr Speaker, I think the Government response has already been tabled.

Mr Moore: Yes, I think it has.

MR HUMPHRIES: It has. I want to make just a few comments about it. Mr Speaker, I think this is a quite important variation to the Territory Plan. It will affect only a very small number of people. Nonetheless, the number it will affect will be affected quite significantly. In the last few weeks we have had a very intense debate about the nursing home accommodation bond which the Federal Government introduced and which, as recently as last night, it announced that it has decided it is not going to proceed with. I have to say that I think that is a good idea. I think if I were them I would have given up on the idea some while ago as well.

The problem of finding suitable accommodation for elderly members of our community will not go away. This variation to the Territory Plan is an attempt to be able to deal with that problem in, I think, a balanced way. It creates the capacity for people to place what is entitled in the plan "a habitable suite or a relocatable unit" into part of an existing ACT leasehold to accommodate a person who is elderly and in need of care or a member of a family who has disabilities of one sort or another that require special accommodation.

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