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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 411 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

authority would, in his words, "drive the Stanhope government's planning reform agenda".

That, to my mind, is not independence. It gives a whole new meaning to the word "independence" and there is a clear conflict in hitching the government's agenda to the role of an independent planning authority. I fear that the term "independence" is being used in the same grimly ironic way that soviet state supremoes used to style their governments as democratic. It is just another example of this government's Orwellian newspeak.

The minister, I fear, has lapsed into epistemological nihilism-the doctrine that one statement is as good as any other or, as Lewis Carroll's Humpty Dumpty said, "Words can mean whatever I want them to mean." In this case, it is all about PALM and "PALM believes what I believe." Those were the words that Mr Corbell uttered at the meeting of the Gungahlin Community Council on 13 February. Mrs Cross will remember them being said as she was there.

Doesn't that indicate a bit of a penchant for control? Could you possibly have an independent planning authority which believes what the minister believes? Could an independent planning authority ever go to the minister and say, "Minister, I really don't think that is a good way to go. I think that is a really dumb idea, Minister." They would not be able to, because they have already been told what to do, they have already been given their riding instructions. PALM believes what Mr Corbell believes.

Mr Stefaniak: Otherwise it is incompatible with socialist reality.

MRS DUNNE: That is right. If you think that, they will go and white you out. Mr Corbell told anyone who cared to listen that no-one from PALM would be turning up to the meeting of the Gungahlin Community Council to talk about light rail because they thought exactly what he did-more Orwellian groupthink. Is it any wonder that those of us on this side of the chamber have difficulty in accepting readily that the new planning task force will be encouraged to tell Mr Corbell anything he does not want to hear? Is there any scope for it to tell the minister that it believes that the agenda he is intent on driving is flawed? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

The brief for the proposed new authority has it operating "at arms length from government", but that is unlikely on present indications. There is too much of a tired old world rather than a brave new world here. Mr Corbell has a lot to learn about planning. As raised by Ms Dundas during question time today, he has lots of aspirations about becoming the planning supremo, as evidenced by his crash or crash through approach to most of the issues that he has brought forward.

I take, for instance, the Gungahlin Drive extension. He made many commitments, both before and after the election, that he would meet the former government's timetable for the building of the road and, at the same time, he will change the route and he will conduct an EIS. Somewhere along the line, something has to give; either that deadline has to give or the processes that he undertakes have to give.

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