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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (27 August) . . Page.. 2806 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Of course, Mrs Dunne was a central player in the last government, which brought us the Bruce Stadium fiasco, Hall/Kinlyside, the V8 supercar race, the hospital implosion and so on. She was the key player in the Office of the Environment, with the planning minister, Deputy Chief Minister and Chief Minister. And you would have thought that, in all that time, when she was senior adviser to the planning minister, if she had serious concerns about the Planning and Environment Committee not having all its time wasted in dealing with draft variations, she might have done something about it. But did she? No, she didn't. Did she get her minister to deal with that? Did she seek to amend the legislation? Did she get her minister to raise the issue? Did she get her minister to provide extra resources for the previous planning committee? No, she did none of these things.

She now stands up and says, "Oh, I'm really annoyed and frustrated because I'm just doing the government's bidding." Well, first of all, if she wants to come into this place and seek to amend the land act to remove the requirement for the planning committee to look at a draft variations, I would be very interested in that debate.

Secondly, if Mrs Dunne is saying that she doesn't want Assembly committees to be involved with looking at draft variations, we will be very interested in hearing her arguments on that as well. This government actually believes that it is very appropriate that an Assembly committee oversight changes to the Territory Plan. These are the highest order changes that can be made in relation to planning policy and they require a high level of detail and scrutiny. Mrs Dunne comes in here and says, "Oh, we're so busy doing the bidding of the government." Well, you've got options, Mrs Dunne. But you didn't do anything about in it the last seven years and I doubt you'll do anything in the next three years.

Mrs Dunne also said in her comments that she was concerned the government was not being open and accountable in relation to the Planning and Land Bill. If we are being so unwilling to be honest and open, why did we agree to refer it to her committee for inquiry? Why did we do that, Mrs Dunne?

Mrs Dunne: Because you had to.

MR CORBELL: Well, no, we could have voted against it, but we didn't. We could have made an argument about, but I actually stood up in this place and said the government supports the proposal. That doesn't sound like a government which afraid of scrutiny and of having its issues looked at in a reasonable way and in a reasonable time frame.

Mrs Dunne also says that the government is not prepared to have any scrutiny of these consequential amendments to the planning and land act. I invite Mrs Dunne to go back and look at this Hansard from the previous sitting week when we referred the Planning and Land Bill to the committee for inquiry and report. I stood up then-perhaps Mrs Dunne is a little hard of hearing-and I said very clearly that the government would be tabling the legislation in the September sittings, and that at that time I would be moving to refer the consequential amendments to the committee for inquiry and report. So where is Mrs Dunne's argument? Once again, she is up there, shrew like, pointing the finger and saying, "You're not honest, you're not accountable." But where is the evidence to back up her argument? It simply isn't there.

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