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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 13 Hansard (26 November) . . Page.. 4685 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

that he had organised. Unfortunately, the Chief Minister forgot to send out the invitations. Therefore, it was impossible for us to attend.

Mr Hargreaves: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. The issue is that personal explanations pertain to individuals, not to organisations. Mr Smyth is referring to an organisation.

Mr Cornwell: I wish to speak to the point of order, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: On that point of order, I think it goes to the members of the Liberal Party who are members of this Assembly and they are entitled to respond.

Currong apartments

MS TUCKER (3.38), in reply: I would like to summarise the arguments as I heard them and rebut them. I will start with Mrs Burke. She seemed to be saying that she thought it was a bit out of line for me to be raising the motion. I am not quite sure of her point there. It is the case that members of the crossbench-certainly, Ros Dundas and I-have been working quite closely with Currong, as has Mrs Burke. She certainly does not have unique rights to that issue.

I think it is odd, considering the comments and statements she has been making publicly, that she will not support this motion and that the Liberals will not support it. It seemed to be that the argument was that a decision has been made and the matter is the government's responsibility. Obviously, that is totally inconsistent with the intent of most of the motions that the Liberals put, and rightly so. The role of the opposition is to challenge the government if it thinks that what the government is doing is not in the public interest. That is what I am doing at this point.

The other argument Mrs Burke seemed to be putting was that support for this motion would put people at risk. People are living there now and will be for up to 12 months. If they are so seriously at risk now, I am not quite sure why Mrs Burke is not demanding much more urgent action of some kind. She also said that the reports show that we have to get rid of the complex, that we have to close it down. That has to be very seriously challenged. If you look at the reports you will find that that is a very weak argument. I did go to quite some length in my speech to explain how the recommendations of those reports varied and how they described various options which did not necessarily end up with demolition or the closing of Currong flats.

Mrs Burke: That decision hasn't been made yet, Kerrie.

MS TUCKER: Mrs Burke interjects that the decision has not been made. I said closing Currong flats-

Mrs Burke: You talked about demolition.

MS TUCKER: I said demolition and closing; you need to listen, Mrs Burke. The point is that the decision has been made to close Currong flats. I am saying that that decision

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