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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 424 ..

MS CARNELL

appropriate checks and balances and appropriate reporting mechanisms, as well as a very impressive organisational mentoring reference group to ensure that the appropriate services are provided and public money is well looked after.

MR KAINE: I ask a supplementary question. It seems that this rose by another name is now being recommended for funding again. I ask the Chief Minister: Who is the author of the recommendation that this organisation be funded again?

MS CARNELL: On Mr Kaine's logic until now, the Canberra United Party was probably a front for the Liberal Party, but it is hard to believe that that would be the case. That is the same sort of deal. As I think I said in answering a previous question, the committee or the tendering group was set up under the normal circumstances. This service went to tender. An appropriate tendering mechanism was put in place. My understanding is that the person Mr Kaine has suggested may have a conflict of interest, a matter which he has referred to Linda Webb and which is being investigated, was not the decision-maker.

MR WOOD: My question is to Mr Smyth. It is also on the study we have been talking about today. Can the Minister confirm that PALM required that references to the failed Hall/Kinlyside development be deleted from the study?

MR SMYTH: I am not aware of PALM demanding anything of the consultants. This report was put together in the standard way that such things are done, through consultation with the department. The rural residential discussion paper is out for discussion. The community has had ample time to comment on it, and we are collating answers to it now.

Mr Quinlan: Before that.

MR WOOD: Yes, that is right, Mr Quinlan. It is what happened before the paper went out. Let me add to those questions. There are two points. Firstly, Minister, why did you allow the so-called independent study to be compromised by removing the comment about the failed Hall/Kinlyside development from an earlier draft which had been circulated within government on 14 August last year? Secondly, why did you also allow the deletion of those references in the draft which indicated that the decision by the Government to support rural residential development was a significant departure from the longstanding and well-understood approach to the planning of Canberra's rural areas?

MR SMYTH: Mr Speaker, this is a discussion paper that has gone out for comment by the public. PALM worked closely with the consultants to make sure that we got what we had asked for. This was a discussion paper that was not asked to comment on Hall/Kinlyside but to look at future possible sites for rural residential development in the ACT, and that is what the discussion paper has delivered.

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