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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 188 ..

justified. The communities of Fadden and Macarthur are right to be deeply suspicious that this was a lobby and a secretive exercise.

Let’s turn to the minister’s plan delay process. Where is the minister’s transparency of action? Where is his conviction? Why bother, Minister, going through this planning process sham when you are striving to get your way anyway? The minister has stated categorically that he will utilise his call-in powers. Is there any wonder that the citizens of Fadden and Macarthur have no trust in the government on the Karralika issue?

This is very poor planning. This is patently unfair treatment of our citizens, and the government should be deeply ashamed of this action. The government is to be condemned for this shabby treatment of citizens and for this act of clumsy planning. There is a time for government to expedite issues in the greater community interest, but that is not justified in this case.

I will just pick up on something the minister said in his speech. The minister has tried to distract from the essence of this motion and the core of the concerns by trying to make this a debate about health. It is not a debate about health. We do not debate the need for a viable drug rehabilitation system. We do not debate the needs of people at risk, whom our community has a duty to look after. Minister, there is no argument with that.

Let’s get back to tors. What are they? Mr Smyth has quite eloquently described the sneakiness of this planning process: the difficulty in accessing information and the handful of letters sent to residents over the Christmas period, just before a fait accompli government action. This is very poor behaviour, and this government is a disgrace. This government has let down the community and again failed in its duty. I call upon the Chief Minister to get a grip on this minister and abandon the plans to expand Karralika. At a minimum, I call upon the Chief Minister to direct his minister not to exercise his call-in powers.

MR HARGREAVES (11.58): I will address one or two things that Mr Pratt said. In fact, in all the time he took to make his speech, there were only one or two things that made any sense. What he was doing was putting a lot of downward pressure on the soapbox, bluff and blustering. I am sure that after he consulted his road map to find out where Bugden Avenue was, he decided to jump on the bandwagon of his leader.

His behaviour in this issue has been singularly lacking and I believe sincerely that we are seeing the product of the work of the Leader of the Opposition and that Mr Pratt is suffering from a massive dose of irrelevance. He did say a couple of really clever things, such as, “Not even five minutes consultation would be allowed.” Did he back it up by saying where he got that from? No, he did not. It came straight off the top of his head.

He talked about the Leader of the Opposition’s eloquence in talking about “being sneaky”. I have to say “eloquence” is not a word that I would say about the Leader of the Opposition’s speech. And “a handful of letters”? Nice words; total misrepresentation of the truth.

Mrs Dunne: Point of order, Mr Speaker. Mr Hargreaves has just said that Mr Pratt totally misrepresented the truth. That is unparliamentary and it needs to be withdrawn.

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