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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 4 May 2004) . . Page.. 1710 ..

30 per cent of urgent funding. The remaining $7 million is now being slowed down because it did not do the proper work to account for how this money would be spent. That is symptomatic of how this government goes about putting its budgets together. Recommendation 5 looks at the government improving the processes so we do not have these errors in the future.

Recommendation 6 looks at the cost of getting transcripts from the coronial inquiry. I have endeavoured to get hold of them and each day consists of probably 100 pages at $10 a page, which is something like $1,000. There is a large amount of interest out there in these transcripts but they are beyond the reach of most people in the community, and certainly that of members of the opposition. Recommendation 6 is simply a request for the government to post to a website, in the community interest, all the transcripts as they become available.

On page 17 there is an unnumbered recommendation. I suspect that is not anyone’s fault. The committee was still meeting until well after 10 o’clock last night and the committee secretary and the chair were here until almost midnight putting this report together. The recommendation asks the government to carry out appropriate assessment before any further vegetation is removed. It relates to an incident of clearing of vegetation on Farrer Ridge where the guys with the chainsaw turned up before the guys with the spray cans and the tapes to mark the trees.

The guys with the chainsaw did their bit. They said, “It looks like that one, that one and that one are going. X marks the spot except we have marked it with a chainsaw!” An older gentleman living in one of the residences that backs onto Farrer Ridge has been, for the last couple of years, carrying bucket after bucket of water to keep these trees alive. The trees were planted by the local land care group. Much to the upset of the committee, unfortunately, a little bit of zeal got in the way and the trees were gone before the assessment was done. That is a reminder that we must make sure we get the process right.

The committee has recommended that the money for Phillip Oval not be appropriated until the government comes clean with the documents the committee has asked for. Once its report is tabled the committee expires, so recommendation 7 is that all documents and correspondence relating to the proposed purchase of Phillip Oval be given to the Assembly. I quote what the minister said:

…I also indicated that I would not support transfer of the lease, because I thought it was inappropriate to sell the lease to a party who wasn’t proposing to use the oval predominantly for sporting-type activities.

That is reasonable, if that is what you want. If you want a buyer who will take the oval and keep it as an oval then that is fair enough. If a developer wanted to purchase it and use it for a development but that was not government policy, you can understand that.

The problem is that the minister did not tell the committee there was another party interested in purchasing the oval for exactly the purpose the minister asked for, that is, to use it predominantly for sporting type activities. I quote from a letter from the other third party. It says that they:

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