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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Thursday, 24 June 2004) . . Page.. 2723 ..

time or another misled the Assembly or the community by accidentally or carelessly making an incorrect statement. Sometimes we realise and correct the record, and at other times it is brought to our attention and we then correct it.

The opposition is claiming that Mr Corbell has seriously misled us on several occasions, and I think they are saying that the misleading was intentional. Having listened to Mr Corbell and Mr Smyth, I have to say that I am not able to share the view of the opposition that Mr Corbell deserves to lose his position as minister, although I am interested in the amendment put by Ros Dundas because I am concerned at the length of time it has taken the minister to clear up some of the inconsistencies.

I will go through the accusations one by one. Firstly, there is the issue of the hospital patient activity data. This was a sequence of events incorporating changing reporting regime, the surprising provision of less information than had been promised and a subsequent motion in the Assembly that resulted, in the end, in a return to the original process. Clearly, Mr Corbell would have preferred to control the information to a better extent, and did not appear to be concerned that we would receive less information in the new format than we had received in the past. It strikes me more as an uncooperative approach than an offence against the code of conduct, and was dealt with effectively, if perhaps slowly, through normal Assembly processes. It does set a rather unfortunate tone, however, for the relationship between the Assembly and the minister.

The next issue in Mr Smyth’s claims was Mr Corbell’s performance in the estimates hearings last year, when he withheld information on hospital waiting lists. The subsequent privileges committee inquiry, as everyone would be aware, found that Mr Corbell was in contempt of the Assembly. In response to that, the Assembly expressed its grave concern about a minister who chose not to be forthcoming with information that was accessible and ought, in the context of an estimates inquiry, to have been made available. Arguably, given the minister’s subsequent comments that he was “more conscious perhaps than I have been previously of my responsibilities”, that ought to have been the end of the matter.

The next chronological issue relates to the long-running saga of the trees in Nettlefold Street, Belconnen, when action began in the community and in this place against development of the Nettlefold Street site. The minister made no secret of his view, which was that the previous government had sold the site for development in accordance with the territory plan. The site was not of true ecological significance, in his view, and buying it back would prove to be either too expensive or impossible. When the Assembly passed a motion calling on him to negotiate a land swap with the developer in order to preserve the Nettlefold Street site from development, to say that the minister was disgusted is probably not too strong a word.

While the Assembly does not have powers to compel government to act, choosing not to pursue the request without offering a full explanation was not a particularly constructive approach. Following a censure in the Assembly the minister, through his office, made some attempt to contact the proponent and advise them that a land swap of some sort might be on the cards. It is hard to believe that the minister’s heart was in that negotiation, and the fact that the proponent’s agent advised him that there was not much point in pursuing the matter was clearly almost convincing enough. Since then, of course, we have heard various rumours that the proponents were urged by others—not

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