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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 350 ..

don’t have any reason to doubt that—as to exactly what the Planning Minister, indeed the government, is doing in relation to the Assembly’s direction.

I hope that they would tell the Assembly the exact position. Not only the Assembly but also Helen Brewer and everyone in the community should be concerned about what is happening with this site, and specifically what is happening to the trees. There appears to be a lack of action here. The government has a bit of explaining to do on this one.

Karralika facility

MS MacDONALD (5.54): I want to correct the record from the debate that was held yesterday regarding the Karralika facility in Fadden. Mr Smyth made a few comments about me during the debate. I feel that I was misrepresented and that Mr Smyth did not get his facts right.

Mr Smyth said, “What we had was Ms MacDonald arriving at a resident’s house and saying, ‘It’s all okay, the development is off. We’re going to pull it and it will go through the proper process,’ and it wasn’t until the press release arrived from the minister’s office, a copy of which was made available to the community, that you get to paragraph 5, which says, ‘But I’ll call it in.’ Ms MacDonald wasn’t telling the residents it was going to be called in.”

Yesterday I explained that it had been in the press release put out by all three Labor members for Brindabella—that is, Mr Wood, Mr Hargreaves and me—and I explained what had happened at the resident’s house. I met the person I had arranged to meet and then her neighbours came over. I believe that is where Mr Smyth got his information from, which I do not believe is correct. There was quite extensive discussion about what was happening with the call-in. But I had only just arrived at the person’s house when the neighbours arrived about 10 minutes later. I was going through what was in the press release from me, Mr Hargreaves and Mr Wood. Mr Smyth later said, “Ms MacDonald raises some interesting points. She claims to have taken a press release. I went looking for the MacDonald press release. It’s a habit in this place that press releases go to the library so the community can see what you’ve actually said and what you stand for.”

I have to say that the press release, as Mr Smyth was informed yesterday, went out under Mr Hargreaves’s name and that is what it looks like, Mr Smyth. If it did not go to the library, I apologise for that, but I am sure that I would not be the only member and Mr Hargreaves would not be the only member not to send press releases to the library. The press release actually says that, during consideration of the development application and public comment by ACTPLA, the Minister for Planning will signal his intention to call in the application and, in doing so, he will put a resolution to the ACT Legislative Assembly seeking views on whether an expansion of rehabilitation services at Karralika should go ahead. That was quite clearly in the press release which I took to the resident’s house and which I was going through when the next door neighbours arrived—

Mr Smyth: But you wouldn’t leave it with them, you wouldn’t give them a copy.

MS MacDONALD: I only had one copy. They did not ask me for a copy, Mr Smyth, and I was in a rush when I left. I would have been happy to leave a copy with them,

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