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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 3373 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

In the longer term, car parking will continue to be accommodated partly in front of the AIS and in the eastern area of the stadium, and through the provision of public transport for major events. This is recognised by the AIS in its own master planning for the area. In short, car parking at the AIS is not an argument for removing the western alignment from the plan.

The issue of the impact of noise on residents of Kaleen can be effectively addressed by either route. The government's own preliminary assessment, prepared by the consultants Maunsell, highlighted the fact that an effective buffer existed between both the eastern and western alignments and that effective noise amelioration measures, such as noise mounds, could be accommodated for either alignment. Kaleen residents would be further away from this road than they would be from the existing Federal Highway or Ginninderra Drive alignments which also border the suburb.

Mr Speaker, on top of these issues is the government's deeper agenda, and that is the agenda to permit a broader scale of development activity in the Bruce precinct. This is an agenda in which the government has a vested interest. The government's vested interest is in precluding the western alignment as an option for the development of the Gungahlin Drive extension. That agenda is specifically tied up with draft variation No 176 to the Territory Plan. Draft variation No 176 proposes to change land use policy which places residential development immediately adjacent to the western alignment. The ACT is a joint party to this draft variation, along with the Fern Hill joint venture and a number of Commonwealth government agencies.

The ACT government has taken the view that development of the western alignment would diminish the development opportunities for the Bruce area. This approach underlies the fact that the government's agenda has more to do with the value of the return it gets for its land assets at Bruce than on broad considerations of the most appropriate and effective arterial road route for Gungahlin residents.

Labor's view is that the arterial road link is the higher and more important land use than the development aspirations of individual leaseholders in the Bruce area. The Bruce precinct can continue to be developed as a mixed use precinct, and the road corridor for the Gungahlin Drive extension would not impact on the overall development of that precinct.

Mr Speaker, the government says it went to the last election with a policy of the eastern alignment and that it should be allowed to proceed with development and passage of this Territory Plan variation today because of that policy. I would like to put the lie to that comment. On 5 November 1997 the now Chief Minister, the then minister for planning, Mr Humphries, was asked a question by me in relation to details about what was then known as the John Dedman Parkway. The Chief Minister said, as part of his answer:

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