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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (4 March) . . Page.. 450 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Will the minister investigate the use of this practice and, if it is to continue to occur, explain the rationale to the Assembly?

MR STANHOPE: Thank you for your supplementary question, Ms Tucker, as testy as it was. Yes, it was very nice of you to give me 35 minutes notice, Ms Tucker, but I do have other things to do. I was not in a position to rush off-

Ms Tucker: You have a whole department to do it; it should be there like that.

MR STANHOPE: What, my department should be able to snap it fingers! Ms Tucker wants an answer in 35 minutes; stop the world and get Ms Tucker's answer. Ms Tucker approaches my office at 2 o'clock, graciously gives notice of a question she will be asking 30 minutes later, and then expresses some testiness that my department did not down tools on the basis that Ms Tucker had a question. What appalling arrogance!

Ms Tucker, as I indicated in my answer, I am more than happy to address the particular issue of the alleged disparity in the advice that you identified. Hopefully, I will have that answer before the close of question time. I will be more than happy to table it.

In relation to the second aspect of your question, I am not 100 per cent confident in terms of the particular situation that arose. I have some recollection, however, of the conservator, Dr Maxine Cooper, doing me the courtesy of letting me know that she proposed to announce here decision on this matter and that she was meeting with residents. I think that she indicated to those residents that she was happy to speak to them, but she had not at that stage had an opportunity to speak to her minister and, as a courtesy, she asked those residents whether they would mind waiting a day to give her the opportunity of speaking to her minister.

That was the basis, as I understand it, of that conversation. I think that it was simply a situation of Dr Cooper wishing to do me the courtesy of letting me know that she had a decision which she wished to discuss with residents and which she had not had an opportunity to discuss with me and she thought it appropriate that she should at least have an opportunity to discuss the matter with her minister before it became public. I think that that is probably quite reasonable.

Land development in Gungahlin

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, my question is to the minister for planning. Can the minister report to the Assembly on the government's land development pilot project in Gungahlin?

MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, I am very pleased to advise on the success of the government's pilot land development project in Gungahlin. The Yerrabi Estate stage 2 in the Gungahlin Town Centre is being developed, as many members would be aware, as a pilot-

Mrs Dunne: At huge cost to the ACT taxpayer.

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