Page 2443 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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Albert Hall will address community need or reflect the values and affection accorded it by a large part of the Canberra population. The NCA, which is re-working its plans for the whole Albert Hall domain, might be taking into account the view of the ACT Heritage Council on the Albert Hall environs. What that will mean for the long-term future of the building itself remains uncertain.
The key problem that we still have with this half-finished tender process is that it will require the managing company to make a substantial capital investment in the building, and such an investment is long overdue. But to require a private business to make such an investment in a public asset creates a form of un-coded shared ownership that will lead to complex problems further down the track that will be very difficult to unpick. The recent history of the Phillip Aussie Rules football oval is testament to that.
Recent well-attended and lively public meetings have demonstrated how important Albert Hall is to Canberra’s sense of identity as a city that is the home for generations of residents. This government’s reluctance to put its preferred solution on hold in order to take account of recent developments and interests will come back to haunt it and those of us who believe that the hall could again play a big role in our civic life.
Finally, I want to talk for a moment about waste as it has been a bit of a topic this week. The decision around the Mugga Lane Resource Management Centre, previously under the management of Revolve, was disappointing. It raised an important and contentious issue about tendering processes and procurement. That process was not fully transparent. When the department was asked during the estimates process about what the terms of reference were, particularly in relation to the waste management strategy on which the tender process was based, we were told that the strategy was on bits of email and whiteboards and generally inaccessible.
Other points I raised about the employment of disadvantaged people seemed to be lost in political point scoring. Just for the record I point out that the whiz-bang new composting system at the ANU is actually a HotRot system, not a HotRock system, as is written on page 143 of the estimates report. I have been to see that system and I understand that, despite it taking most of the organic waste from the campus, there is still a capacity to double it. I would say that any government department that is nearby would be most welcome to approach ANUGreen to be involved. Of course, I welcome the announcement yesterday, muted though it was by commercial-in-confidence provisions, that such a facility might be developed in Hume.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (3.59): I support the passage of this bill, but I cannot but take the opportunity to comment on where the opposition believes that value can be added to the government’s approach to territory and municipal services aspects of this budget. I want to list a number of areas of concern.
The first is roads and bridges. The community of Tharwa has had to wait far too long for a replacement bridge. The ongoing debacle that is this government’s management of the project is appalling. An incredible amount of time was spent on the on-again, off-again decision to repair or terminate the existing bridge, the heritage bridge. That is an issue which still draws some debate in any case.
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