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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 7 Hansard (6 June) . . Page.. 1997 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The question is: can we afford to go back to the policies of previous Labor governments? Whether we can or we cannot is a matter for scrutiny, for accountability and for debate in this place. We need to know what is going to happen with these processes. We need to have them scrutinised. That is the job of this Assembly. Few measures have occasioned such serious dollars and such serious potential losses to the territory as land development. If any issue every occasioned the need for a committee of the Assembly, this is it.

Mr Corbell referred to the Bruce stadium. There were at least two inquiries by Assembly committees into Bruce stadium. Why not have that in this case as well, Mr Corbell?

Mr Corbell: I do not have a problem with that, but you should wait until the government has announced its direction and how it is going to implement it, then you can question it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Let me take that issue up. Mr Corbell said we should wait. He said that this matter is still before the cabinet and therefore it is not appropriate to have an inquiry into this matter. I have looked at my notice paper today, and the very next item of business is a motion to set up a select committee on estimates to examine the Appropriation Bill 2002-03. There must be a problem that the Clerk can look at with this. The Appropriation Bill 2002-03 is not on the notice paper. It would not still be before cabinet, would it, Mr Corbell?

Mr Corbell: That is an absolute nonsense, Gary.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is not. The appropriation bill is still before cabinet.

Mr Corbell: You are saying that we can pull that off and we can put it on after the budget has been introduced.

MR HUMPHRIES: That's right, talk over your opponent. When you are in a corner, you talk over your opponent. The fact of life is that the appropriation bill is still before cabinet. So is your land development scheme. Both matters should be properly scrutinised by committees set up in advance for that purpose, not only to find out and analyse what the government is doing with respect to these matters but also to ask the community for input on them.

As we know, there is concern in sectors of the community about the prospect of government re-entering the land development market. There are concerns that what the government is doing with this process in the meantime is restricting the supply of land into the ACT residential market especially, in order to increase its own land bank for the purposes of its own policies on land development. In the meantime the effect of that is to push up the cost of housing for people presently seeking access to the market and generally making it more difficult for the industry-

Mr Corbell: In this financial year we will release more land that you ever planned to.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, that is absolutely not true.

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