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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 181 ..

There is no point in going out and consulting, raising false hope or saying, “We are actually listening to you and we want you to tell us what you think.” The minister is really saying, “I’ve already decided. It’s going ahead.”

Paragraph (7) is extremely important. It calls on the Assembly to direct the minister not to exercise his call-in power on this development. Have no doubt, minister: this will be a clear direction from the Assembly if paragraph (7) gets up.

To ensure that the community can have confidence in the process, paragraph (8) calls for an inquiry to be undertaken by the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment. Mr Speaker, I signal my intention when we get to my motion to move an amendment to add the use of the call-in power to the matters to be considered by the committee.

There is a great deal of concern out in the community about the use of the call-in power. I know that Ms Tucker is very concerned about its use, so we will add that as well. We do not want a longwinded affair. I have talked to the chair of the planning committee and she feels that they can do this inquiry by the end of May after they clear some outstanding work. She said that at that stage she did not believe she would have work that would stop this happening.

The amendment that I have just foreshadowed seeks to substitute a new paragraph (8), which reads:

refers for inquiry and report the matter of the Karralika development and the use of the call in power to the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment, with the Committee to report by 31 May 2004.

I think that is self-explanatory. That is a good process. It sends the signal that we as an Assembly as well as the community are in favour of Karralika and the work they do; that we all understand that we need appropriate residential and non-residential programs; that we want to be involved in our planning process in this city; and that we will not put up with the cloak of confidentiality that the minister has thrown over all of this. We are sending a clear signal to the minister not to call it in. We are opening up the process so that the community can actually have a say. Through the Assembly committee, they can ask questions of the government about information that they want or cannot find.

Mr Speaker, we will, I guess, deal with Mrs Cross’s motion first. When we are finished with that we will move on to my motion. I would request that we deal with the motions seriatim so that each of the lines can be considered and voted on separately.

The clear message out of this, Mr Speaker, is that comments like “They’re just a bunch of hysterical nimbys” will not be tolerated by the community. They are not hysterical nimbys. The petitions that have been tabled contain 1,327 signatures collected in just under 10 days and cover 78 suburbs. There are about 110 suburbs in the ACT, so three-quarters of the ACT are interested in this process and in what the minister has done. Residents from 22 suburbs turned up at the meeting. Some people who had skipped dinner because the meeting started fairly early could not get in because the room was full.

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