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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1179 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

know that this Chief Minister really does not have any scruples about drawing them into the political debate in order to score what she regards as a political point against her opponents.

That said, this proposal could be a great one for the Territory, but its ultimate success will depend on the commitments offered being reflected in the final contract, on the Chief Minister abandoning the need to score political points and on an opportunity being provided to all members of the Assembly to genuinely consider issues around the payment by the Government of significant amounts of taxpayer funds to this company for the purpose of cementing the deal.

That is a debate we still need to have. It is not a debate that we are having here today. We do not have all the information available to us. There are questions that still need to be asked and there is information that still needs to be provided - information that has been promised, namely, the Derek Volker report and - - -

Ms Carnell: It is not a report; we told you 50,000 times.

MR STANHOPE: The Derek Volker recommendations and the minutes, or whatever they are described as. I think that is a vital piece of information and the Assembly simply cannot conclude its consideration of these issues until all of that information is made available.

MR KAINE (4.58): Thinking back over the last 10 years or so since self-government, there is one issue that has been on the agenda during all of that time, that is, the place of Canberra Airport in this economy and in this community. We have all spoken at great length over many years about the need to develop that airport in conjunction with having a very fast train. We have spoken about the airport being a regional freight hub, we have spoken about it being a regional hub and we have spoken about it being upgraded to an international airport. It is only in recent times that the potential to achieve some of those things has really been there for us to exploit. I think that the potential arrived with the airport becoming a privately owned airport. Before that, we were totally at the whim of the Commonwealth as to what could be done there and whether it was to be developed at all.

I submit that things have moved fairly quickly since the airport was privatised. I know that the new owners of the airport have worked assiduously to encourage increased activity there. I know that the Government also has done so. I have been briefed on a number of occasions about studies that the Government has done in conjunction with the privatised airport to encourage increasing activity at the airport. Until there is an incremental jump in what happens out there, it will stagnate as it did before.

We have here a proposal substantially to increase the activity at the airport, to bring here an airline that has not operated in this place before and to bring with that the ability to build at least some element of an aviation industry in Canberra. Let us face it, very little was done while it was principally the preserve of Qantas and Ansett because they had their centres elsewhere. We have an opportunity now to bring new activity there. This proposal has been put forward by an existing regional airline, a successful regional

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