Page 1815 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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relationship and continuing discussion and consultation with Consolidated Builders in relation to the issue. I will move that in due course, Mr Speaker.
This is a very complicated issue. It is not simple. It is not black and white and it will require a creative solution. That creative solution may not, I have to say, come in days; it may take some weeks, no matter how much we would all like all of the residents to be given a sense of security and confidence about the future and about their capacity to continue to reside where they are currently living.
Blanket calls for one solution or another are not at this stage helpful and may even, in the context of the difficulty, the sensitivity and the complicated nature of some of the issues we are trying to deal with, prove to be counterproductive. The view that the government has taken in relation to this matter is that it does not believe that it is in anybody’s interests for any one of the affected or interested parties to dig itself into a ditch and to be immovable on positions from that ditch.
That is very much the attitude that I have taken in my negotiations and discussions and I have asked other parties that the government is dealing with to remain open to discussion and negotiation and, at the end of the day, to remain open to the prospect of compromise. The government’s attitude to this is that, rather and calling on Consolidated Builders to walk away from the deal, it would be better to seek Consolidated Builders’ agreement to continue negotiations so that the long-term interests of the residents are protected and, in that sense, that they remain on the existing site.
There has been, appropriately so, much community debate around the particular issue but it does need to be reiterated and repeated that this is not a drama of the government’s making. I very much hope that the government may have a hand in its resolution and we are happy to work actively with all parties to seek to achieve that. I certainly will not abandon the residents of the Narrabundah Long Stay Caravan Park, but I do want to come up with a solution that salvages what is possible from the situation in terms of government policy, as well as giving the best possible outcome for the residents, Consolidated Builders and Koomarri.
Whilst some in the Assembly, I think, have sought to twist the history of this incident for advantage, I see no benefit accruing to the residents of the park from finger pointing. In fact, if anything, the dissection of who was told what and when is a distraction, and potentially a damaging distraction, from the real issues: the rights and needs of the residents, the legal rights of the developer and what is surely the desire of the community to see a much-loved community organisation in Koomarri come out of this episode with the least possible damage to the interests of its own constituents who, let us not forget, are amongst the most vulnerable and the most marginalised of all Canberrans.
I think that we do need to be mindful of the impact on Koomarri’s reputation, and the impact of Koomarri’s reputation on its constituent client group, of the ongoing focus on Koomarri’s, perhaps, culpability. Koomarri is a much-loved, vital organisation within the life of Canberra and I do believe that it behoves all members of this place to be mindful of that and to respect the wonderful work which Koomarri does for this community.
For the purposes of a time line, there are some simple, inescapable facts and, for the sake of the time line, I will mention them briefly. In 2000, the then government sold the
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