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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Tuesday, 9 March 2004) . . Page.. 894 ..

MR CORBELL: I just ask Mr Smyth: when was the Peninsula built? I think it was when you were planning minister, wasn’t it?

Mr Smyth: When was it planned?

MR CORBELL: I am pretty sure that is when it was built, Mr Smyth. I might be a bit wrong but I remember, as opposition spokesperson on planning, driving around Gungahlin when I lived there. I remember the Peninsula being built. I was in opposition at the time and you were the planning minister.

Mr Speaker, as to Ms Tucker’s question: the government is seeking, through its involvement in the land development process, to get a better quality urban design outcome. I would invite Ms Tucker to go and look at the Yerrabi pilot land development project. She should look at the subdivision has been built down by Yerrabi ponds. That is a much better outcome. There is a much more legible road network and pedestrian network built into it. One of the reasons it is more legible is that it has been done in toto by a single land developer.

One of the difficulties with some of the estates in Gungahlin is that different parts of Gungahlin were built by different land developers and there was significant capacity for them to vary from the overall master plan for the suburb. That meant that the suburb did not connect up; indeed there are parts of streets in Gungahlin which run in a certain way. That is another achievement of Brendan Smyth—he could not even get the streets to joint together properly and they had to be put together in a certain way between estates. That is the sort of problem we are seeking to overcome. We have entered into a land development process to try to achieve that and we are getting those outcomes.

I would like Ms Tucker to have a look at Yerrabi and to have a look at the planning for Wells Station, which is another estate the LDA is engaged in. We are trying to create more legible street frameworks which make it more attractive to use public transport, rather than use motor vehicles, as well as to walk short distances. That is exactly the planning that is being built into our new estates. We have still got more work to do but I think our new estates are a significant improvement on some the work that occurred in 1995 through to 1998 and, beyond that, under Brendan Smyth.

Bushfires—declaration of a state of emergency

MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Chief Minister. You have previously advised the Assembly that discussion of a declaration of a state of emergency in January 2003 was prompted by a hypothetical loss of a significant part of our ACT electricity supply. Yesterday, smoke from a deliberately lit fire on One Tree Hill, near Adelaide, triggered protection equipment on the ElectraNet-operated 275,000 volt interconnector between South Australia and Victoria. This led to 300,000 households and businesses losing power for several hours, or 40 per cent of the state’s electricity demand.

There was no breakdown in public order and no consideration of a declaration of a state of emergency. This is consistent with other experiences, such as the explosion in the Esso natural gas plant, which supplied 80 per cent of Victoria’s gas supplies where, again, there was no threat to public order. Why do you expect us to believe that

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