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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3546 ..

addition, a community organisation like the National Trust has also come to me and said that they would prefer to see this bill passed; and that, yes, it is a pretty good bill.

That is where it ends. The property council does not want this bill passed. There is the accumulated submission from the property council, the planning institute, the Australian Property Institute, the MBA and the HIA. They have all said that there are serious problems with this. When I consulted some of the authors of that submission earlier this week they said, “Our druthers are that this bill not be passed at this stage.” I will go on to the issue of consultation with indigenous people, or lack thereof. In fairness, there has been some consultation but—

Mr Wood: Endless! Six years, as you said.

MRS DUNNE: At the very best, what has happened could be described as haphazard and as less than transparent.

Mr Wood: Nonsense! It has been totally, absolutely, exhaustive!

MRS DUNNE: I will take an example.

Mr Wood: Rubbish!

MRS DUNNE: Mr Wood can address this in his reply. I specifically asked officials a little while ago about what consultation had been carried out with Mrs Agnes Shea, who had written to the Leader of the Opposition expressing her concerns about the bill. Mrs Shea wrote to the opposition on 18 June. Earlier this week I was assured, “No. Mrs Shea is happy now.” “When did you speak to Mrs Shea?” I asked them, and they said, “There was a meeting of the Namadgi board last week and we talked with Mrs Shea. Oh no. Actually we didn’t talk with Mrs Shea then; she was not there. We talked to her later and she is happy with the bill.”

Seeing that Mrs Shea had made the effort of writing to the opposition, and seeing that this was a live issue, I rang and spoke to Mrs Shea on the morning of Tuesday this week. She said that she had not had a meeting with the heritage unit last week. I have an email from a member of Mr Woods’s office staff from yesterday afternoon that says:

The Aboriginal members of the ACT Heritage Council …

He names them. It continues:

… have also been closely involved in the development of the Heritage Bill 2004. The matter has been a standing item at meetings of the Heritage Council for the last two years and until her term expired in late April 2004, Ms Agnes Shea was a member of the Council’s legislation subcommittee. Ms Shea recently expressed concern that she had not seen the final Bill and was thus not able to answer community questions. However, after the meeting described above—

that is in this email—

with the Aboriginal signatories or their representatives to the Namadgi Co-management Agreement, Ms Shea has indicated that she is now satisfied that

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