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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (29 November) . . Page.. 3424 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

benefit of all Canberrans. Mr Speaker, the government will be supporting Mr Moore's amendment. If the amendment is accepted we could support Ms Tucker's motion, but in its current form we cannot.

Debate (on motion by Mr Berry ) adjourned to a later hour.

MR CORBELL (5.20): I seek leave to amend the motion standing in my name on the notice paper, to take account of the change in time of the day. The amendment deletes all words after "by" and replaces them with the words "close of business Thursday, 30 November".

Leave granted.

MR CORBELL: I move:

This is an issue that I am very concerned about. The government has had a considerable period of time to clarify its position in relation to urban infill in Canberra. The question has to be asked: what would the government have done in relation to urban open space if the Labor Party had not exposed their serious, deliberate and concerted investigation of utilising urban open space for residential development? Would the Chief Minister have made the same ringing endorsement, saying that urban open space was not up for grabs, if the Labor Party had not exposed the extent of the government's investigation in that regard? The answer would have to be no, and the work would be continuing.

The information I was fortunate to receive under freedom of information two months ago outlined a systematic investigation of areas of urban open space for potential residential development. There were no ifs or buts in relation to that documentation. It was quite clear what the agenda was. I was obviously concerned to see what further work in this regard had been done by the government since that time. I was particularly interested to see what further work had been done by the Infrastructure and Asset Management Group-I assume that is what they are called now-in the Department of Urban Services. That is the group responsible for land release functions in the territory and previously part of the Department of Treasury and Infrastructure.

For that reason, on 20 October I lodged a further freedom of information request seeking all documents, notes and other papers concerning land infill studies since 22 September 2000. The purpose of the request was quite clear. The purpose was to establish what further work had been done since I had received material on an earlier date. In particular,

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