Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (10 March) . . Page.. 494 ..

MR SPEAKER

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, we are also talking about the purpose of the paper that Mr Smyth referred to yesterday. I am making the point to the Assembly that that report was not intended to be a completely out of context assessment of rural residential. We were not saying to these independent consultants, "Come into the ACT and just tell us what you think about rural residential". That was not the purpose of the exercise. The purpose of the exercise was to progress to the next stage the stated position of the Government and of the Legislative Assembly on rural residential development. That is what it was all about.

Ms Tucker: The consultant did not seem to understand that.

MR HUMPHRIES: No, he did not. I concede that. The consultant certainly at some point - - -

Ms Tucker: What was the problem there? A contract problem?

MR HUMPHRIES: Well, perhaps it was.

Ms Tucker: Again?

MR HUMPHRIES: Perhaps it was, Ms Tucker; but let me make the point that the consultant clearly departed from the view that the Government had taken on rural residential in the course of discussions with the department and others about the process of rural residential development. In that respect, the department - not the Government, not the Minister - as far as I am aware, made it clear that the consultant should reflect the views that the Government had already taken on this. He was not being asked: Is rural residential a good thing or a bad thing? He was asked to progress the way in which rural residential would go forward in light of the Government's and the Assembly's views on this subject. That is what that document was all about.

Mr Speaker, that is fine. We have got the position stated as to what that paper was all about. Mr Smyth came into the Assembly yesterday and described that as an independent report. He was right to the extent that it was a report commissioned independently of the Government; that is, it was obtained from people who were not employed by the Government, whose views were being sought, to be provided to the Government and, once the paper was prepared, to the community, on issues connected with rural residential development. But it was, as he himself has conceded, probably an overstatement to say that therefore the product of that work, when the discussion paper was finally available, was independent of the Government. Clearly, officers of the Government represented the Government's views to the consultants, and it seems fairly clear that the consultants changed their view or what they produced as the end product of their work to conform with what the Government had already stated was its view about rural residential development and, as I repeat, what the Assembly had said about rural residential development.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .