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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Thursday, 19 August 2004) . . Page.. 3945 ..

sure that you didn’t trammel those rights, but you can easily say it now because this is the sort of performance today that replicates where you were coming into the last election.

In the last election, having screwed up the process of the dragway, having been integrally involved in the dragway stuff-up, you produce some hush money to give to the dragway people to do an evaluation that would carry them past the election. The taxpayer paid effectively 50 grand or 70 grand to your re-election fund as hush money through the dragway people. That’s the sum total, Mr Stefaniak, that you’ve contributed. You had a strangling regime in place and you’ve done precious little else.

Let’s just focus on the dragway for a moment. You’ve made a commitment. I challenge you, Mr Stefaniak, to go public on where you will construct the dragway. I challenge you to go public on the proposition of ownership and operation of the dragway, because it’s a material question. If you want to resume land for a public purpose, you have to own the dragway.

There will be very shortly some noise evaluation reports coming through. Let me put it on record now that I don’t hold a lot of confidence in what those reports are going to allow us to do. But if you come into this place and grandstand, as you did three years ago, and try to curry favour with motor sport enthusiasts by saying, “Bill’s going to do all this for you,” you’d better be able to back it up. I challenge you to pick the site. If you’re going to curry favour with motor sport, then the other side of the coin, Mr Stefaniak, is: you have to delineate those people who will be impacted by the dragway, those people upon whom you will impose the dragway.

Mr Stefaniak: So you’re not building one?

MR QUINLAN: Not at this stage, I’m not, Mr Stefaniak. I have said repeatedly that we’ve put money in the budget but I have grave concern that we are yet to identify a piece of land suitable for a dragway in the ACT. That is a fact. You would find, if you did your homework, that you would be precluded from designating those.

But I challenge you to go public and commit to a site—that’s all you have to do—and tell us whether the government going to own it, run it and operate it; what class it’s going to be—whether it’s going to be international, national, regional; how much money you’re going to actually put into it. Get outside and do it. Right? Because you need to face all the people that are going to be affected by it.

A dragway will produce a huge footprint; it will alienate a whole area around it. It won’t be a case of just the impact of, say, airport noise. It’s going to be a whole different kettle of fish.

Mr Stefaniak: That’s why the Majura Valley is the best site for it.

MR QUINLAN: All right. I’ll give you a few figures that I’m privy to. They haven’t been double-checked; it’s still with environment; I’m still trying to wrench the study out of Environment ACT. We have, I think, 27 noise credits. I think a dragway’s going to require something like 300, and people that will be impacted will be in Campbell, Hackett and those areas as well—

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