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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3414 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

In the early 1990s another proposal was put forward to turn the old buildings into a country club-style tourist resort that would be linked to the adjacent golf course. The area was subsequently zoned for entertainment, accommodation and leisure uses under the Territory Plan. If you look on the Territory Plan map you will see that this area is coloured in blue and designated as 8A. However, the developer withdrew and again nothing happened with the site. Since then there have been various attempts by government and the Yarralumla Residents Association to have further work done on determining a future use of the brickworks that would include the restoration of the heritage-listed buildings.

Residents thought that they were getting somewhere when the government agreed to initiate a consultancy to prepare a development control plan for the site. However, just before this consultancy started, the former Chief Minister unilaterally announced that Florida was to be moved to the brickworks and that the Yarralumla residents would go ballistic but she could not help that. The residents, who had in good faith entered into the discussions with the government on the future of the brickworks, felt totally undermined and betrayed.

That was bad enough. But when residents turned up to the first community consultation meeting they were told that the consultants were not just looking at the brickworks site but also at infilling in the open space between Denman Street and Cotter Road, which is outside the boundary of the 8A site. They were also told that land on the other side of Cotter Road next to the Curtin horse paddocks was being considered for overflow parking for Florida because the consultants needed to find space for 1,000 parked cars and 6,000 car movements a day during Florida.

It is no surprise that the residents were totally outraged at what they perceived to be a land grab of currently open space. They were also told by the consultants that all this extra housing on open space was necessary to generate funds to restore the brickworks, so if the residents wanted the brickworks restored they would have to accept the loss of their open space.

This was denied by an official from the Chief Minister's Department at the consultation meeting last week but by then the damage had been done to the community's confidence in this process. The official also denied that Florida was definitely being moved to the brickworks but residents found this hard to believe given that every option presented by the consultants provided for Florida.

Only at the end of the meeting did the official grudgingly accept that the option of no development of the brickworks for Floriade and no inclusion of extra housing would be included as an option to be presented to government. It is no wonder that tempers flared at this meeting, because the consultation process has been reduced to farce. I have spoken to many Yarralumla residents about this issue and there is a strong feeling that this consultation process has gone totally off the rails. They are totally disillusioned with the process.

I have moved my motion to abandon the current consultation process because I do not think anything more can be achieved by this process. It would be a waste of everyone's time to continue to fight over the options being put up by the government's consultants. I believe that there needs to be a fresh start on determining a viable future for the

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