Page 2728 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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I do not think that will ever go ahead—and I certainly hope that it will not—but the $6 million that will have been spent at the end of the planning process is money that has been essentially wasted. That is another $6 million that could have been put into much more important areas such as health, education and other important infrastructure such as roads. There are all sorts of examples such as that. Mr Speaker, I will take my extra 10 minutes if I can.
MR SPEAKER: Yes.
MR SESELJA: I turn now to some of the EpiCentre issues which we certainly dealt with in the estimates process. We had the planning minister get up in this place, I think it was on Tuesday or perhaps it was last week, and accuse me of misleading on the EpiCentre issue. He has not been able to point to any areas where I have misled. That is clearly not the case. If he could point to the areas, then that would be wonderful.
I highlight some areas of concern, some discrepancies in some of the answers that I have been given in estimates both from Mr Corbell and some of his officials. In the estimates process on 21 June, Ms Skewes said:
All the parties get access to the information that Austexx and all the other bidders for the site got.
Mr Corbell said:
My understanding of the LDA’s processes is that, where advice is sought by one party, it is provided to all parties.
Yet we have proof in the documentation that ACTPLA encouraged the LDA to write back to ING but no evidence that the advice they gave was provided to any other party. We have another instance. In estimates on 21 June, I asked:
… have you received any correspondence, or has the LDA received any correspondence from either the NCA or ACTPLA raising concerns about this development and how it complies with the territory plan ...
Ms Skewes said:
I am not aware ...
I said:
Any correspondence from the NCA or ACTPLA?
Ms Skewes said no. Yet we know that ACTPLA cc’d the LDA in correspondence which dealt specifically with concerns over compliance with the territory plan. Emails from departmental officials clearly show that they were cc’d to Anne Skewes and state “respond to the key issues raised by ING” and “discount retailing not included in the lease purpose”. These were clearly issues about the territory plan, and we got answers that did not reflect that at the time. We certainly were not to know at the time. Mr Corbell was defending the process. He said:
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