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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Wednesday, 11 February 2004) . . Page.. 226 ..

distributed on a limited basis to groups that support Karralika. The consultation could have taken place then. The DA was entered into ACTPLA on 30 September. Why was consultation not done within the 15 working days after that? The question has to be asked: why didn’t ACTPLA do the consultation immediately, as they are obliged to? Why was it left for three months, till over the Christmas period? So don’t come bleating and don’t come blaming and saying that this has been held up by the community, the Liberals, Brendan Smyth or the crossbenchers, when you knew the urgency of this for nine months and hid it for nine months.

Mr Hargreaves made a really interesting point, which is unusual, when he said that the minister changed his view after representations. Isn’t that interesting? A day before, the minister met with community representatives and told them that he was not going to go through with his process. Let us not have John Hargreaves, Karin MacDonald and Bill Wood going in and saying to the minister, “On behalf of our community, we want you to change this.” The minister would not change it when the community representatives visited him to say, “We think this is wrong and we want you to change the process.” Let us not be too sanctimonious about this.

Ms MacDonald raises some interesting points. She claims to have put out a press release. I looked for the MacDonald press release. It is a habit in this place that press releases go to the library so that the community can see what you have said and what you stand for. The last press release that Ms MacDonald sent to the library was in November 2002.

Mr Hargreaves: I sent it.

MR SMYTH: If Mr Hargreaves sent it, then I will go and look in his file as well. A press release has gone out in Ms MacDonald’s name, but it does not appear to have been seen. It certainly had not been raised with the residents until confronted with the truth.

Ms Tucker has asked some interesting questions. They are questions that the community has been asking. She asked in this place yesterday: whether we can have the business case. It still has not been tabled. Can we have the social impact study? It has not been tabled. Can we see the EIS? It has not been tabled. Is there a transport study? I have not seen one. The curious thing is that over the last 18 months there has been an enormous process: the traffic flows on Bugden Avenue have been at great expense and caused inconvenience. But, funnily enough, nobody knew that something was going to happen at Karralika that would have an impact. We have a traffic calming measure that has not taken into account a major development that may or may not have an impact on traffic flows. Where is the traffic study? You can’t see it; you can’t get it. I think Ms Tucker’s call in that regard is right.

Ms Tucker has asked for confirmation of what a committee might do. I think she summarised it quite nicely when she said that perhaps there should be a post mortem of the process. Let us work out where the community felt let down and how we can give advice back to the minister on what ACTPLA might do to improve the process.

In regard to the committee commenting on the DA itself, that is not appropriate. The committee does not do that at this stage. It is not a power that the Assembly, through its resolution on what the committee would do, has given to the committee, so I do not believe that that should happen. The call-in power is encompassed in the amendment

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