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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 1967 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, what occurred then was that the Government put in place a study into rural residential development. It was claimed that this report would be independent, separate from government, and would look at rural residential development in the Territory. The interesting thing about this report, Mr Speaker, was that it changed. It changed to suit the Government's policy-making on the run.

Initially, the Chief Minister stood up in tis place and said this report would look at whether or not rural residential would work and what were the pros and cons, and, if it was going to work, where it could go. Interestingly, after the Government's failed Hall/Kinlyside land deal was exposed, the report changed. No longer was it a report on whether or not rural residential was a good idea; it was a report on the fact that rural residential was a good idea and where it should go. That is not the sort of policy-making that stands up to any rigorous analysis, Mr Speaker.

Unfortunately, the Government's blunders did not end there. We then had the revelation that the report had been changed substantially to suit the Government's policy position. If the Government had come to this place and said, "This is a report which is going to outline the Government's policy approaches and how it is going to deal with this form of potential land use for the Territory", that would have been fine; but that is not what the Government in this place said. Instead, what the Government in this place said was that this would be an independent study.

You would have thought that if the study was independent it would have been able to look at the whole range of issues fairly openly and come to its own conclusions about whether or not the Government's policy direction was a fair one. Otherwise, there is not much point in having an independent study. But, Mr Speaker, that is not what the Government said in this place would be an independent study. We were able to reveal, Mr Speaker, that the study was far from independent. Who will ever forget the facsimile transmission from the consultant from TBA Planners, the people engaged to undertake this study? It said:

Mr Speaker, that one document undermined all the Government's attempts to justify rural residential development in the eyes of the Canberra community. It undermined the Government's attempt to justify rural residential development in the eyes of anyone with any credibility in the planning debate. Regardless of that, regardless of the fact that that report was shown to be fundamentally flawed, indeed, fatally flawed, this Government continued to push ahead on the issue of rural residential development. So we had that bizarre announcement, Mr Speaker - it can only be described as a bizarre announcement - about a month ago during the Estimates Committee hearing of the release of land for rural residential development in the ACT. The two sites the Government had identified were Hall/Kinlyside and north Gungahlin.

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