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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4058 ..

That’s the neighbourhood plan action list—but no funding. Perhaps there’s goodwill—there’s goodwill in PALM and other agencies, but they don’t have the funding.

That is the commitment this government had to planning for people. The whole resolution and the whole determination of people to support a changed approach to planning goes out the door when you have people like Ms Saxby, who said on that occasion, “I was very supportive of neighbourhood planning and I am very supportive of the notions of draft variation 200, but essentially we were betrayed by the process.”

We have had much notice of the betrayal by the process, but none more up-to-date than yesterday’s Canberra Times where, again, this government has got it desperately wrong. We saw the residents of Griffith up in arms over their neighbourhood planning, for a variety of reasons. The core area was going to be changed to extend A10 development down through all of the modest brick bungalows along Captain Cook Crescent, potentially doing away with a large swathe of those.

There were a whole lot of other changes being proposed for Griffith. The really interesting one, Mr Deputy Speaker—about which you have asked questions in this place on a number of occasions and it is nice to see it confirmed at last—is that residential aged care accommodation will be established on the old O’Connell Education Centre site—section 78 Griffith. For members of the opposition who were then associated with the government, we will die with “Section 78 Griffith” engraved in our hearts, because of the agony created by this minister who now proposes to go along and do away with the open space there and build aged care accommodation.

Late last week I talked about the Chief Minister as being a Bourbon and you pointed out that my quotation was wrong—that it was actually about the courtiers around the king, who had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Again, this planning minister has learnt nothing about the people of Canberra, and he also seems to have forgotten just how painful section 78 Griffith can be. I hope that, as we draw to the end of this minister’s inglorious reign, that pain will come home.

MR HARGREAVES (4.19): What an entertaining speech! I thank Mrs Dunne for the hyperbole and rhetoric contained therein. It was a most entertaining diatribe, can I say. It was also full of phrases like: the Labor Party has done this wrong; the Labor Party has done that wrong; the Labor Party has done something else wrong; and this minister has done something wrong. However, what is consistent about this is that this minister has done something—this government has done something.

Mrs Dunne was attached, like a sucker fish to the underbelly of a shark, to the regime that did absolutely nothing except sit there and watch things fester in the sun. Then Mr Corbell comes along. Out of her own mouth, she says, “We will go to our graves with section 78 Griffith in our ears.” Why do you think that is? It is because they made a monumental cock up of it. I can say, “Good on you.” I hope, sincerely, that you live forever but that the last voice you hear is mine saying, “Farewell.”

Along comes Mr Corbell. For right or wrong, every new thing you do has teething issues; there are problems with it, but essentially you have a look at its core and see

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