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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1044 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
Not only was there no analysis of the transport needs but these two events were not even listed in the table of clients which was among the documents provided by CTEC for our inspection in the Clerk's office. That bit was not blacked out. There was a list of clients. It was quite amazing to me to see that there was a V8 car race listed as a client, there was a government listed as a client, there was a JG Service Pty Ltd listed as a client, but there was no multicultural festival or Floriade. There has been no satisfactory explanation so far for this omission.
So what is the situation? There seems to be, for some reason, absolute faith in CTEC that the Capital Airport Group will look after all their transport needs, even though they do not appear to know what those needs are, let alone communicate them to the airport group which, I do not need to remind members, is a private company and, if it is like most businesses, will have as its mission statement that it must maximise profit for its shareholders. Why would any business basically write a blank cheque in this way? Why should CTEC assume such a thing, unless it is the case that CTEC just does not really care about the transport needs of its workers or the success of the multicultural festival and Floriade? Clearly, that last possibility is becoming more a probability in the minds of many of us as the days pass, with growing community condemnation of CTEC's management of the multicultural festival and the extremely unfortunate treatment of Domenic Mico as director of that festival.
I thought I would have a look at what the transport needs might be for a festival such as the multicultural festival. I have just had a look at what I would think could be the numbers of organisations and community groups and artists that might be wanting to communicate with the director of the festival and CTEC in the build-up to such a festival. I have talked to people who have a fairly good sense of what the numbers are and I am told that there are around about 70 to 80 ethnic community groups, over 30 artistic groups, over 150 to maybe 200 artists and, as I understand it, at least 15 or so embassies.
I have been able to find that out and I think the airport should know about that because they are supposedly going to be providing transport for this festival. I would have thought it was fundamental for any business that was seriously working to maximise profits for its shareholders to understand this kind of analysis because they are apparently offering a bus service to accommodate the needs of this event.
Mr Deputy Speaker, the concerns about access to Brindabella Park have in no way been addressed. Perhaps we will see the Capital Airport Group now show itself to be an exemplary corporate citizen and provide, at some significant cost to itself, a bus service which addresses these access concerns. However, until that happens there will be a very big question mark over this choice of location.
The second point in the second part of my motion deals with the Territory Plan and the fact that this major commercial development does not fit with the sentiment of that plan. The principles of the Territory Plan, as subscribed to by this government and by this minister, as they apply to commercial development, are:
- That Civic Centre will remain the prime metropolitan centre for commercial, entertainment and tourist activities
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