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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 617 ..

MR HARGREAVES

independent label, the interested observer may very well want to see a counterargument sitting up there, and then a judgment about which one of the two arguments actually holds the cup full of cold water.

This report has been disowned by its author because of the amount of interference that has been put through it. When it went through the Government's massage parlour, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, it came out completely different from the way the author intended it to look. The author was not just telling the Government something it already knew; he was supposed to be telling the general public out there what the situation ought to be.

Mr Corbell: What he thought.

MR HARGREAVES: What he thought. Thank you very much, Mr Corbell. Not what the Government felt; what he felt, because he is an expert and he has been portrayed as an independent expert. Indeed, his position as an independent expert has been so compromised that the report has notations in the margins saying, "This bears no relation to my original report". He has totally disowned it. He has exposed it for the fraud and the sham that it is. Why on earth did the Government waste so much money, instead of just sitting down and writing its own report and saying to the people of the ACT, "Here is what the Government feels about the issue."? Instead, the Government went through the sham, an expensive exercise, of commissioning an independent report, labelling it as an independent report, and sending it through its own massage parlour to come out the other end absolutely and unadulteratedly wrecked.

I agree with Mr Humphries that the Government can put forward any reports it likes and it can have a significant amount of input. Indeed, it can change the flavour; I have no problem with that, either. It is the portrayal of the report as an independent one or as a government one. This one was portrayed as an independent one; so much so that the Minister for Urban Services has retracted the word "independent", for which I congratulate him. Let us not snow anybody here. Let us not put up smoke and mirrors here. This report, now, is not worth the paper it is written on. It is not worth the paper it is written on because it is now shrouded in so much suspicion. It is an absolute product of the Government's massage parlour - I cannot emphasise that enough - that nobody in his right mind would pick it up and say that it is an unbiased look at a particular subject. That will not happen. Either you change the whole nature of the thing and put it out as your own report or, if you really are genuine about having an independent report so that we can all see that there is an unbiased approach to the subject, chuck this one away, learn the lesson and get another one.

MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: The discussion is concluded.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, on a point of clarification, I seek leave to make a personal explanation.

Leave granted.

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