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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3535 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

Mr Stanhope asked in what areas was there reservation or some potential lack of full commitment on the part of the ACT government towards the statement issued by the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. The answer is: essentially in two areas. One is the question of self-determination and the other is the question of customary law.

My reading of the document produced by the council is that those two concepts are concepts very much put forward for application in parts of Australia where customary social structures for Aboriginal people remain relatively intact and where some application of the concept of self-determination or of customary law might be applicable. I have to say I have serious doubts as to how far those two concepts could be taken in the context of the ACT.

Those reservations, though, should not be viewed as any kind of black mark on the government's commitment to reconciliation. In the ACT we have a different kind of Aboriginal community to that in other parts of Australia. It is our duty to engineer reconciliation with that community, albeit as part of a national program. It is with that community that we have our primary obligation to engage and to reconcile. We will be developing strategies which are relevant for this community and not for communities in other parts of Australia.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services) (4.17): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I ask for leave to make a ministerial statement concerning waste management infrastructure at Mitchell and Mugga Lane landfills.

Leave granted.

MR SMYTH: I am pleased to announce today the finalisation of tenders for the construction and operation of the new waste management infrastructure at Mitchell and Mugga Lane landfills. The construction of these facilities is a key action of the no waste by 2010 strategy.

The need to rationalise Canberra's waste handling systems by establishing waste sorting, recycling and transfer infrastructure to accommodate maximum recovery of resources was identified in the 1996 no waste strategy. Expressions of interest for the design, construction and operation of a facility at Mitchell and for the augmentation and operation of disposal at the Mugga Lane landfill were called for and closed in October 1999.

Select tenders for the Mitchell resource recovery and transfer station and the operation of the Mugga Lane station closed on 4 April 2000. The proposals were evaluated by a panel of officers from the Department of Treasury and Infrastructure, the ACT Government Solicitor's Office and the Department of Urban Services.

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