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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 190 ..

At that meeting I undertook to ask the minister to go into a proper consultation process because, as I understood it, there were two feelings there: firstly, they did not want it and, secondly, they wanted to be involved in the consultation process. I undertook to ask the minister to undertake a proper consultation process. Ms MacDonald and I went to the minister with Mr Wood and we asked him to do that, and the minister has delivered on that. There is a proper consultation process. There are two opportunities to have a go.

Those people who do not want it there at all are never going to be satisfied, and I do not denigrate their position at all. But the people who want a consultation process want to have a say on whether it goes there or not and have a say about the scale. We should allow those people to have a say as well.

At the weekend, we advised that the process would be roughly the same as a normal large-scale residential development but that, at a certain point after consultation with the Conservator of Flora and Fauna and with ACTPLA and after advice from the land council, the minister would use his call-in powers to trigger the debate in this place. Those opposite would have people believe that the minister has made up his mind. I reject that view. If the minister had made up his mind, firstly, we would already know about it and, secondly, why would he go through the sham of an Assembly debate and risk it?

The minister has given us an honest approach to this thing. What would happen if we went through this process and a lot of the people in the area of Fadden-Macarthur said they wanted a slightly increased facility there and that the development as described—let’s say 30 beds—is not going to happen? What if those people who did not want it at all decided that they were going to take it as far as the Supreme Court? That could be a 12-month or an 18-month process.

The minister is saying that, once all that advice is in, he will use his call-in powers to bring the debate to the Assembly. Every piece of information Assembly members want can be made available to them. To me, that is an open process. This place will then signal its intention to the minister and the minister has said in public that, if the predominance of will is that the issue be rejected, he will reject it and go and look for another site. If it is not and it is to proceed under a certain scale, we will go down that track.

That is all this is. This is interpreted by these people here as a sneaky use of the call-in powers. Coming from the Leader of the Opposition, who is a ringmaster of misrepresentation in this place, this is an unbelievable—and here I want to apply one of those words on that list of words I am not allowed to use here. This is the man who used his call-in powers how many times when he was planning minister?

Mr Smyth: How many?

MR HARGREAVES: How many times did you use your call-in powers and reject an application? How many times did you signal your intention to use your call-in powers before you used them? Not once. Whose actions with call-in powers prompted this planning minister to move amendments to make sure that that use was justified in this

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