Page 3721 - Week 12 - Thursday, 22 November 2007
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With a turnover of half a billion dollars a year, in addition to employing 3,000 people, clubs are very much at the heart of the social life of Canberra, of the ACT. Ours is a club town, a club city. We are not a pub town or a pub city as many other places are. Clubs are central to the social life and to the life of this community, and in any debate around some of the difficult and distressing aspects of poker machines we should always bear in mind for the sake of balance the wonderful contribution that clubs make to the ACT.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Sitting suspended from 12.23 to 2.30 pm.
Ministerial arrangements
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the Environment, Water and Climate Change, Minister for the Arts): I draw the attention of members to the fact that the Attorney-General remains away on government business at a ministerial council meeting. He is therefore unavailable to take questions. If I am able to assist, I will seek to do so.
Questions without notice
Civic—petrol plume contamination
MR STEFANIAK: My question is directed to the Treasurer. Treasurer, the second appropriation bill provides funding of $600,000 for a remediation project related to the contamination of underground water from a petrol plume in the city. Treasurer, when did you first become aware of this contamination? What is the nature and cause of this contamination?
MR STANHOPE: I thank the member for the question. I will have to take some aspects of that question on notice. At a rough guess, I would say that I first became aware of the plume in Civic at the time that I came into the Assembly when the Liberal Party were in government. I think that I became aware of it when you were a minister and I came into the Assembly.
Mr Smyth: And you’ve done nothing for six years.
MR STANHOPE: No, we have. I will take the question on notice. I do not have details. But this plume has been managed by territory and municipal services in its respective and various guises I think since before self-government. I think I first became aware of it in a detailed sense when I became a member of this place 10 years
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