Page 2639 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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…remained convinced schools needed to close. That 10 per cent of the city’s public schools had been closed in recent years was an acknowledgement that it had a significant problem with over-provision of student places—and still did.
Mr Humphries said the problem has been put off for another day.
That day is now. The problems put off by Mr Humphries and the Liberal government in the 1990s are now being confronted by this government, while the Liberals are still trying to put it off with motions and bills rather than engaging in substantive policy issues. This government has the vision and the leadership to take the decisions that will ensure the sustainability and quality of our public education system into the future. We have backed this up with record investment in public education. We would have hoped that, on such an important issue, the opposition and the Greens would have a substantive position.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The minister’s time has expired.
Planning—EpiCentre lease
MR SESELJA: My question is to the Minister for Planning and relates to the EpiCentre auction. The minister stated in the Assembly this week that a meeting held between ACTPLA and Austexx could not have been a pre-application meeting despite the document being headed “pre app meeting”. The document also references the number 200504369, which happens to be the development application number for the Austexx DA. What is the minister’s explanation for this anomaly? Is it another misunderstanding or a mistake in record keeping?
MR CORBELL: There is no anomaly. I have indicated in a previous question time that one cannot lodge a development application until one owns the land. There is no getting away from that fact. Whatever the ACTPLA administrative processes might be about what number it calls a meeting and what number it calls a DA is completely irrelevant. The issue is that one cannot lodge a development application until one owns the land, and any suggestion that a process was in place that gave Austexx some favourable treatment is simply false. It is false because one cannot lodge a development application without owning the land, which it did not do until it purchased it at the auction in December.
Cycle lanes
MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, my question is to the Minister for the Territory and Municipal Services. Mr Hargreaves, it is on the public record that a Canberra magistrate commented recently that he believed that the change in road configuration to allow for a cycle lane had contributed to the death of a motorcyclist at the corner of Coulter Drive and Belconnen Way. Given those concerns, and given the concerns of the NRMA road safety trust and many others since the implementation of the on-road cycle lane system across Canberra, will you now be conducting a complete safety audit of this system and, if not, why not?
MR HARGREAVES: I thank Mr Pratt for the question. I think I have already answered it in the media but I am happy to do so again. Firstly, since the introduction of the cycle
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