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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (3 December) . . Page.. 4413 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

What do we find today and yesterday but a re-airing of ideas Mrs Carnell was floating about a year ago? Rather than put up with this pesky national authority, rather than deal with the problem in an intelligent and comprehensive way and rather than coming to grips with the management issues that are before them, what is Mrs Carnell's answer? She says, "We will take it over. Why do you not give us all those little bits? Then we will not have to go through this pesky and terrible process of having to find some dual management processes, of having to deal with this in the way that a mature city should, and achieving the agreed outcomes that a dual planning process demands for the city". All that is too hard. Mrs Carnell says, "Just give it to us. We will take care of it". What an absolute indictment of this Government's capacity to manage and to deal with some of the most fundamental issues that face the ACT!

As Crispin Hull rightly points out, we are the national capital. We have absolutely no rights to determine what should happen on national space. We have absolutely no money to determine what should happen on those spaces. But we do have rights and capacities and authority to ensure that the people who live in the city have a say. It is on this point that this Government has failed to create any sort of a working partnership with the Federal Government. All they want to do is to take over and to become total control freaks on the whole of the ACT rather than the bits that have been given to us. They want to be the absolute tyrants in all the bits of space that are available for us to share, rather than acknowledge the just authority of the Federal authorities and their responsibilities and deal with them in partnership and rather than accept the right of the Federal Government to run this place as a national capital and to take from that the good that flows to the ACT. No, their only solution is to say, "Forget all that. We will take over. We know best. We will manage it".

Of course, we have seen how they manage. They will put up a wedding chapel on the lake without talking to anybody. They will put up a futsal slab without talking to anybody. They will run a rally all around the lake without talking to anybody. They will put housing up and down Northbourne Avenue without talking to anybody. We see what this Government's agenda is. They say, "Just give us the land. Just give us the capacity. We will just do it". Never mind that the residents might have an opinion. Never mind that we all have to share this city. Never mind that there are clear and defined roles for the different bits of land. No, we are asked to trust Mrs Carnell.

One can only be suspicious and extremely worried about what this says about this Government's attitude both to the national capital and to the people who live in the ACT. What we see overwhelmingly is that they have no concern for people's rights to have a say in their own environment and that which they share as the national capital. They give absolutely no credence to the fact that this is a national capital and that national authorities must be able to manage and maintain the city as the national capital for the good of the nation, not just the people of the ACT. They have become totally churlish about working with anybody else.

The National Capital Authority has been around since 1989. It has a clearly defined role. It has clearly defined responsibilities, but it does not do a lot of things that the ACT Government could do in partnership. At every point when the ACT Government was challenged to do that, it showed its complete contempt for the people of Canberra

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