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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1542 ..
MR CORBELL (continuing):
The other point that I wish to make relates to the Gungahlin Community Council's view in relation to other alternative routes for the road. I was very pleased to hear Mr Gower tell the standing committee:
If the Assembly chose another route it would meet the demands of the Gungahlin community.
I want to stress this particularly to the minister. I asked Mr Gower:
What do you think would the view of people in Gungahlin generally if a majority of this Assembly said to the government, "We want that road to be somewhere else, not on the alignment you prefer." Do you think that would satisfy people in Gungahlin?
Mr Gower answered:
Yes, absolutely.
So what we have is confirmation from the Gungahlin Community Council that, if a majority of this Assembly chose to say to the government that the road should be built on a different alignment from the alignment favoured by the government, that would satisfy the community of Gungahlin. The answer is, "Yes, absolutely." That speaks for itself. It certainly puts in context some of the comments of the Minister for Urban Services over the past week.
MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (6.48): Mr Speaker, the documents that I quoted from this week were from Mr Gower and from the Reverend Roma Hosking. They were not my words; they were their words. The words of the community council were:
The Minister for Urban Services, Mr Brendan Smyth, did not give the Gungahlin Community Council an ultimatum on the route for Gungahlin Drive Extension or no road as expressed by Mr Corbell.
There is the clarification of what was said. In regard to which route the Gungahlin Community Council prefers, again I quote the Reverend Roma Hosking:
Please note that several members of the executive of the Community Council attended the Maunsell workshops in 1996 and at those workshops we made it clear that we preferred option 3 ... which had links to Barry Drive and to Caswell Drive, now known as the eastern route-the government's preferred route.
This pre-dates the present discussions by four years. Try as Mr Corbell might, they are the words of the Gungahlin Community Council's secretary. They are clarification of whatever has been said. The words stand on their merit.
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