Page 3288 - Week 10 - Thursday, 19 October 2006
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Mr Seselja’s point was an interesting one: he could not support my motion because the government cannot be trusted to move, as they would have to have done, to protect the amenities, to go that extra step, because a return to the status quo is not acceptable. That is absolutely right. But why are we sticking with this idea that it is like this now, it is going to like that then. Governments are here to act, aren’t they, and to protect, to balance things? That is another point. Mr Corbell used the term—it is a favourite one—“appropriate balance”. It is such a meaningless term. In whose mind is it appropriate? What does “balance” mean? You can have a tonne of feathers and a tonne of lead. They still weigh the same but they look a bit different. I think that is one of those meaningless terms. It is not the same as equity. What we are talking about here is equity.
It being 45 minutes after the commencement of Assembly business, the debate was interrupted in accordance with standing order 77. Ordered that the time allotted to Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.
DR FOSKEY: In relation to the beer garden, I am not suggesting that the government buy it back or do whatever. It exists. It is an anomaly in that street, and in a way it was the beginning of the wedge which can mean either that there is going to be more establishments like that or it will remain there, and perhaps as a business. I do not know about its viability; I have no idea what its future is. Business is uncertain in this town, especially when there are so many competing establishments in the Kingston area, and I believe there will be more once the foreshore development really goes ahead.
But there are issues about enforcing the noise regulations there. Mr Seselja mentioned the staff. I can quite understand why staff might want to sit out the back but maybe they could sit out the front and have their cigarettes, their chat and their laughter, to which they are entirely entitled. We should make sure that the trucks and all those other beep, beep, beeping things do not run between seven and seven. It is a matter of enforcement. The damage is done—if we can call it damage; some people call it enlivening the community. As far as the residents are concerned that beer garden reduced their amenity.
A road is not a buffer zone. There are issues about the road. I thank Mr Seselja for his thoughtful analysis of the issues around that. It is a parking place and it is a service route, so maybe a little bit more thought needs to be given to it. But I do not believe that Mr Corbell did address one issue: his statements to the residents about Jardine and Kennedy streets. That is at the core of it all. There is an inequity here and it has not been acknowledged.
In conclusion, I thank Mr Gentlemen as the chair of the committee and I thank whoever did the work on his speech, which was a highly erudite recollection of a case in Britain. There are human rights issues here, I have no doubt. I have not explored them here but it was interesting and probably appropriate that Mr Gentlemen did. It is interesting that he is now endorsing the final variation when the variation that his committee dealt with was the draft variation, and I think it looked different enough for him to comment upon that but I did not hear it.
So, all in all, I have been told that this motion will go down. I will call a division. People in the community need to know where things stand on this kind of issue because, as Mr Seselja acknowledged and as I said in my speech, it will not be the last time that we
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