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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 184 ..

MR HIRD: Mr Speaker, I can understand Mr Wood's excitement about the answer given by the Minister. I thank the Minister for such a precise, detailed answer to my question. My supplementary question is: Is the Minister aware of the diversity of views on this matter?

MR SMYTH: I thank the member for his question. There is a diversity of views on this issue. I have certainly spelt out my views and the Government's views on this matter in the past, in a number of different forums, and I think Mr Wood's views are quite clear as he has made them quite prominent in this morning's Valley View.

But, of course, there is a different view. It is that residential development should cease forthwith in the Tuggeranong Valley. That is the view of Mr Wood's colleague Mr Hargreaves. In stark contrast to Mr Wood, Mr Hargreaves was quoted in an earlier edition of the Valley View, that for 16 November 1999, as saying:

"Moratorium" is an odd word. I went to my Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology to find out exactly what the origin of the word "moratorium" was. It is quite an interesting word. If you look at the words on the same page, you see words like "morose", "more", "moribund", "morbid" - that one is rather fitting -"moron" and "mortal". "Mortal" means "subject to death". That is the effect of a moratorium on residential development in Tuggeranong. John Hargreaves would sentence Tuggeranong to death. For this reason, the Government will side with Mr Wood on this issue.

I do not know whether anybody else remembers the old English pop T-shirts that people used to wear in the 1980s. They had "Choose Life" on them. I think that is what we should do for Tuggeranong. We should choose life. We should stop Tuggeranong from becoming the moribund place that Mr Hargreaves would have it be. I am with Mr Wood on this. While we clearly have our share of morons, Mr Wood is not among them.

I am aware of a diversity of views within the Labor Party. Interestingly, we are missing the view of one person I thought would have represented Labor on this issue. I notice that he is still missing from the chamber. While Mr Wood and Mr Hargreaves are clearly at odds about planning for Tuggeranong's future, where is Labor's spokesman on planning issues, Mr Corbell? The person who should have an opinion on this is not here, and, judging from the press release he put out yesterday, he does not have a view on it at all. He believes it should go off to an independent planning official. The role of the Assembly and its elected members, according to Mr Corbell, is to shut up and listen to what a bureaucrat tells them. Mr Corbell is back. Welcome back, Mr Corbell.

I understand that the Labor Party has a diversity of views on what democracy is, particularly over the last half a century. I would trust the people of the ACT, and particularly the people of Tuggeranong, on that every time. Yes, there is a diversity of views. There is a view that Tuggeranong needs to develop to its full extent to protect jobs in Tuggeranong, services in Tuggeranong, and the environment. There is a view that we should halt development immediately and hope that Tuggeranong can withstand

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