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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2579 ..

developers and builders but also among people trying to get their homes built. It is truly making for growing resentment. That is the fact of my experience.

One typical project stands out in my more recent experience. That was when the plan to refurbish and expand the Karralika rehabilitation centre in the Fadden/Macarthur area emerged from the veil of semi-secrecy under which it was being progressed to fall like a thunderclap on the unsuspecting residents of the area. Nothing could allay the shock of the residents who felt they were being treated like dupes, and nothing could check the resentment they felt at being so ignored.

The upshot of that experience, Mr Speaker—and this cannot be denied—is that the reaction of ordinary citizens did no good at all to the government’s popularity in the long or short term. People lost confidence, and their reactions worsened in proportion to the government’s unrelenting disparagement of their reaction. Any chance of achieving a placatory level of communication was lost forever because of the several bloody-minded attitudes expressed by the government. That, in anyone’s words, was about outcome, whatever side you were on.

It should not have turned out the way it did, and that it did turn out that way was clearly the fault of the government’s handling of the project from the beginning. That sort of planning blunder should never occur and should never recur, and it is only by addressing the evident problems in the way suggested by Mrs Dunne that we can hope to ensure they do not recur.

On that basis, I strongly support Mrs Dunne’s motion but I am also very happy with the first amendment that Ms Tucker has foreshadowed. I think I will speak to those amendments later.

MRS DUNNE (9.20): Mr Speaker, the Liberal opposition cannot support the amendment circulated by Mr Corbell—

MR SPEAKER: Are you speaking to the amendment or closing the debate?

MRS DUNNE: I am speaking to Mr Corbell’s amendment.

MR SPEAKER: You can still speak to the amendment, but you can close the debate as well.

MRS DUNNE: No, I do not want to close the debate; I want to speak to Mr Corbell’s amendment, which I have not spoken to. We cannot support the amendment circulated by Mr Corbell because essentially what it does is gut the motion. It takes out everything after 1 (a) and replaces it with a variation on the form of words in 2 (c).

The minister, in his introductory remarks, said that he was in favour of establishing, for instance, an integrated planning approval system. Why can’t we say that in the motion?

I know that they would be uncomfortable about “the failure of the Stanhope government to establish a clear and trusted process of community consultation”, but that is evident from the high level of discontent in the community and it is about time this minister faced up to it. We should not be deleting words like that. It may be discomfiting for this

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