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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3232 ..

MS MacDONALD (continuing):

As a result, she had lost her voice, she had a really bad cold and she just could not stand the smoky environment. It did not matter where you went: there were people lighting up when you ate. There was no consideration about what was done, so I know that Australia has moved a long way forward in comparison to the rest of the world.

However, that does not mean that we should stop. It does not mean that we should not keep pushing the boundaries and saying this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable for our health, it is not acceptable for the health of people who do not smoke, and it is not acceptable for the health of our children. We have to protect the community from passive smoking and from its ill effects. I cannot say that this has not been discussed before, and that I have not anticipated that there will be people who object to it.

I remember having this discussion nearly 10 years ago, in a previous life. The discussion then was: "It is coming. We will have to ban smoking in bars." However, the fact is that the organisation I was involved with then said, "We do not want to be the first to do it, because we will be the ones who will lose the business." If every workplace that is a pub or a club is required to have non-smoking places, and to be a non-smoking workplace and place for patrons, then there will be no loss of business.

For all of those reasons, I commend the motion to the Assembly.

Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Gungahlin Drive extension

MRS DUNNE (3.59): Mr Speaker, I move:

That the Minister for Planning table, for the information of the Legislative Assembly, before the adjournment on Wednesday 25 September 2002, the report of the independent assessment of the western route of the Gungahlin Drive extension which has been jointly commissioned by the Government and the Australian Institute of Sport.

I move this motion because it has become of great concern to me that such a great deal of petty politics has been played out in relation to the Gungahlin Drive extension. In this place quite recently the government has accused the Liberal Party of letting down the people of Gungahlin. But the facts are quite the opposite.

When we were in government, we pledged to build the road-a real four-lane road; a motorway, not the two-lane squib that has been offered by Mr Corbell. Our promise was not an empty promise-far from it. We actually allocated funding for it in the 2001-02 budget, and we set in train the process needed to begin the work. That work could have begun, as I have said often, on 1 July this year.

Let us reflect on that: we could have been building the road on 1 July. There could have been 87 days since the beginning of construction and we could have seen real results. In 87 days you can do a lot of work. Yet this government has stopped this from happening. It has sat on its hands, it has blocked the eastern route, because of a dubious mandate it claims for its deeply flawed and possibly unachievable western alignment. It was this government-this Stanhope/Corbell claque-that sold out the people of Gungahlin. The

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