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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2966 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

My final point about the subject matter of this debate is that Mr Hargreaves has raised the question of Gungahlin Drive. He has described the role of the federal minister in this matter as "subverting the constitutional process".

Mr Hargreaves: I did not say "constitutional"-I did not use the word.

MR HUMPHRIES: I wrote it down as you spoke it, Mr Hargreaves.

Mr Hargreaves: Then you must have misheard, I did not use the word constitutional.

MR HUMPHRIES: The exact words were "subvert the constitutional process".

Mr Hargreaves: The democratic process.

MR HUMPHRIES: I will check the Hansard. If I am wrong, I will be happy to come to this place and apologise to you-but that is what I heard.

Mr Hargreaves: No. The democratic process.

MR HUMPHRIES: Okay, let us use the words that you are using here now-"subvert the democratic process". You say that, for the minister to step in and try to overrule the ACT government on the question of the route for the Gungahlin Drive extension is to subvert the democratic process. You could be right about that. I also happen to think this is essentially an ACT decision, and that the federal minister probably should not intervene in the matter.

I want to point out the fact that, three years ago, the situation was almost reversed, when there was a local Liberal government pushing for an eastern route for the road, and they had a fairly clear mandate from the ACT community to push for an eastern route. We went to the 1998 election promising the eastern route and were overwhelmingly endorsed by the ACT community. At the time, we had a larger margin over the Labor Party than the present government enjoys over the Liberal Party.

Mr Corbell: No, you did not.

MR HUMPHRIES: If you check the figures, Mr Corbell, I think you will find that we did.

Mr Corbell: No. You did not go to the election with any policy on the road.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am afraid we did.

Mr Corbell: No, you did not.

MR HUMPHRIES: I am afraid we did. We went to the election saying very clearly that we preferred the eastern route-and we got that through.

Mr Corbell: And you said you had no proposal to build it.

MR HUMPHRIES: Maybe so, but we still said-

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