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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3236 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

public, in its entirety and as presented by Dr Fitch. As I advised members yesterday, the government will be making an announcement-and, as I indicated, within the fortnight-on its entire response to the issues raised in the consultation process, and indeed the issues raised by Dr Fitch.

It is interesting to note that I have been contacted this afternoon by a journalist indicating that Mr Kemp, federal minister for sport, amongst other things, has publicly commented on this report. Given that both the Commonwealth agency involved and the ACT government have agreed that the report will not be made public until it is jointly launched by both agencies, I am surprised, to say the least, that Mr Kemp has chosen to publicly comment on it. Nevertheless, the report will be made public, and I anticipate at this stage that it will be made public some time this week.

I do not want to be in the situation where I am faced with a resolution from the Assembly in which the Assembly is asking me to break an undertaking that the ACT government has given to the Australian Sports Commission. Perhaps if Mrs Dunne had done her homework a bit better she would have been aware of these circumstances.

In response to Mrs Dunne's comments, I will make only two other comments. The first is that this government has been more open in relation to the information that it has put together about its proposed alignment than the previous government ever was. For example, we have lodged on the government website every single report commissioned to date, with the exception of the Fitch report, for public analysis-not just the government's response or assessment of those reports but the reports themselves: the noise report, the engineering report, the environmental report, and all the other pieces of work that have been put together in this exercise. That is the sign of an open government and a government that is prepared to be accountable, even when those reports are not necessarily all in favour of that option.

Finally, in response to Mrs Dunne's claim that we should be building the full road, and that it is ready to go, I simply present Mrs Dunne with this challenge: shame on you, Mrs Dunne; how can you build a four-lane road for $53 million, because that is what you set aside in the budget?. You know, Mrs Dunne, and so do I, that any road engineering firm in this town that you talk to will tell you that you cannot build a four-lane road now for $53 million. You might have been able to in 1997, when you set the figure aside, but you cannot do so now. That is the bottom line.

The government will not be supporting this motion today.

MR PRATT (4.17): Mr Speaker, I support Mrs Dunne's motion. I am very keen to see what progress reports there are on the expedition of the Gungahlin Drive western extension. The community needs to know the full facts on what the likely impacts are. As shadow minister for sport, I am deeply concerned and in this place I have repeatedly catalogued the very likely impacts on our sporting institutions of the Gungahlin Drive western alignment. I am just going to talk about those again. They need to be reinforced and placed back on the record.

The western route, as far as the AIS is concerned, is unacceptable. The planned western route would cut straight through the western side of the car parks abutting the AIS. Car parks which would be displaced by that driving through of the 100-metre-wide trench

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