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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Tuesday, 25 May 2004) . . Page.. 2173 ..

More specifically, point three claims that the GDE, including alternatives to it, has been considered at length. At no time has there been a public, co-ordinated and systematic process to pull together the alternatives, the costs and benefits in all areas and make a decision on that basis.

I read out earlier comments from Dr Joe Baker. I hope that Mr Corbell was listening to those and I hope that we do at least see the government support the open meeting that he is supporting so that we can at least look at how, if this road is to go ahead, we can actually minimise the harm and give some consideration to how we can improve the process. I do not see why that is such a big ask. I really am just hoping that the government—Mr Stanhope, in particular—will look at that question.

I can give you quote after quote of the complaints and criticisms of various so-called PAs and assessment processes. I could give you Mr Humphries’s, when he was here, evaluation of the Maunsell PA. He made comments, on the fragmentation of the forests in the O’Connor and Bruce ridges, which were not dealt with. Detailed information on the impact of the road through the Bruce and O’Connor Ridge area is missing. The PA did not quantify the extent it is used for bush walking, recreation and the educational purposes of open spaces to be affected by the impact in terms of severance.

Another comment from Mr Humphries, and the evaluation of the government of the day, was that the assessment of visual impacts of various corridor options in the PA was handled poorly. The evaluation report was critical of how adequately six out of the 10 aspects were actually dealt with. I can go on and on, but I won’t because we are running out of time. But I just cannot support a preamble that suggests that everything has been done that should have been done.

An environmental impact statement would have required consideration of the alternatives. That has never happened. Despite the election commitments, this government has not proceeded to a full EIS. Preliminary assessments have covered environmental issues, it is true, but I do not believe it is true to claim that the assessment has covered all the environmental issues they should have.

The Greens do not agree with point 4, that this is appropriate nor that the GDE is a crucial link. I do not agree with point 5 that the GDE is the best way to facilitate Canberrans leaving and entering Gungahlin with ease.

Finally, one of my more specific objections to this preamble is expressed in a letter by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in 1788 which was cited in the Australian Centre for Environment Law’s submission to the Bill of Rights Committee from which I would like to quote:

Rights … the idea of individual liberty and human rights have been the grand innovation of the state under the rule of law, at first as moral imperatives and later through establishment by law. As experience has made plain, however, “without a political guarantee of legal recourse, there are no individual rights but only pious profession of the value of human beings”. Accordingly it is only by recognising rights as elements of law—through protection, for example, by a Bill of Rights—that those rights serve as an effective limit on power under the rule of law. By establishing a Bill of Rights a society protects its members against in at least two

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