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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 9 Hansard (6 September) . . Page.. 2914 ..

MS CARNELL: That would be fine too if that is what they wanted. I am distressed that they did not access Business Gateway because it is the one-stop shop approach that the ACT government has in place to ensure that people can get access to a full range of business information.

Griffith Primary School Site

MR CORBELL: My question is to the Treasurer. Treasurer, at a well-attended meeting of the Manuka LAPAC last night the head of asset management in your department informed Griffith residents that no development at all at the old Griffith Primary School was an option. Can you confirm that this is the government's position?

MR HUMPHRIES: Of course it is an option, Mr Speaker. We have a public consultation process under way at the moment about the development of the site and obviously we take account of what that produces in deciding what to do. We have foreshadowed in our land release program that there should be some development of that site, but if the end of the public consultation exercise suggests strongly that there should not be any development on the site, well, the government is prepared to consider that option.

MR CORBELL: Minister, can you explain why the site is on the government's land release program for the next financial year as a residential site of 200 dwellings if no development at all is not an option? How accurate is your land release program if that is the approach you take to it?

MR HUMPHRIES: That question, with respect, is so silly as to almost not be worth asking. To say that no development is an option also implies that some development is also an option, does it not? Some development being an option, it therefore behoves the government to put out an indicative proposal on the table for people to see. We have suggested that there could be development of that site and that concept has been placed in the public arena. Nobody has ever suggested that when you put on the table the option for development of a site you say that therefore exactly what is proposed in the land release program must occur; that no change is possible. No-one has every suggested that. It was not the case under Labor. It has not been the case under the Liberal Party. Why you should suddenly think there is some reason to believe that what is in the land release program is an absolute set-in-concrete type promise of what exactly is going to happen, I do not know. Ask your colleague behind you who used to be a planning minister. See how it was handled in your day.

Business Incentive Scheme

MR BERRY: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Chief Minister, and it will draw attention to another episode in the generosity of the Chief Minister with taxpayers' money. My question relates to a Canberra company, Diskdeed. I have raised issues about this company over a number of years. As the Chief Minister does not read the Canberra Times, as of yesterday at least, I might remind her that I think there were reports in the Canberra Times of business incentive grants of $60,000 or $70,000 or thereabouts, and there was some government assistance through the Youth 500 scheme, which grew to the Youth 1000 scheme.

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