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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 11 Hansard (25 September) . . Page.. 3239 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

looking at the question of this particular report. I move the following amendment to the motion:

Omit all words before "the report", substitute "That the Minister for Planning publicly release as soon as practicable".

This amendment basically changes this motion to say not that this report be tabled today, but that the Minister for Planning publicly releases it as soon as practicable. This particular report is a joint report commissioned, as I understand it, by the AIS and the ACT government. It is quite inappropriate for the Assembly to just come in and demand that this be tabled. That is obviously something for the organisations that have commissioned the report.

Having said that, however, I think it is very important that we see the report. That is why I am putting this amendment and not just opposing the motion. I do want to see the report. I think we should have the right to see it, as should members of the community. We should see this report in an unadulterated form; that is, we see the report as it is produced.

Mr Corbell has said-I don't know if he has actually said it in this debate but he has certainly reassured me when I discussed it with him-that we would see the complete report. For me, that is quite adequate. I do not see that it is appropriate to be forcing the release of this report until the people who commissioned it see that as appropriate.

MS DUNDAS (4.29): I will be speaking against the amendment and to the substantive motion. The Gungahlin Drive extension issue seems to be the one that has generated the most hours of debate in this chamber since October last year. This Assembly has yet to settle on a route for a road that I believe should have been built years ago. I have received, and continue to receive, many letters and emails about the particular route of the road, its impacts on nearby residents and the equity of mitigation measures to be adopted along its route.

I want to be confident that permanent Canberra residents will benefit from measures addressing their concerns-measures of the same quality as any of those adopted for residents of the Institute of Sport. I have yet to see the report, but it seems to provide information on what needs to be done at the Institute of Sport.

The minister has told us today in this debate that he expects to release this report within a fortnight, which means that he will have had it for almost a month. As a member representing residents of Gungahlin and of Aranda, Bruce and Kaleen, I am incredibly interested in reading any material that assesses the impacts of the Gungahlin Drive extension and possible ways of reducing those impacts.

As the minister has said today, and as I understand, the report was jointly commissioned by the Institute of Sport and the Department of Urban Services and is designed to look at ways of reducing impacts. But we have been informed today that the report was totally funded by the ACT taxpayer, so it does not seem proper for its findings to be withheld from public view. I cannot see a sound reason-and the minister has not provided me with any-why the release of the report should be delayed. I cannot see how there could be any commercial-in-confidence or privacy concerns raised by the report, or that its

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