Page 1877 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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Given the abundance of comparable broadacre sites, a matrix indicating the order of importance for site selection pre-requisites and a comparison between other suitable sites would be useful to understand that this is the best location.
I seek leave to table that ACTPLA document.
Leave granted.
MR SESELJA: I table the following paper:
Proposed gas fired power station and data centre—Preliminary assessment for Canberra Technology City.
In addition, the planning authority showed the kind of consideration for the community which was lacking in the Chief Minister’s input when it noted:
Given the undoubted community opposition to a power station, further explanation of why this is the best solution is required.
I have asked the government whether it has considered another 17 specific large vacant blocks of land in and around Hume. The written answers indicate that none of these 17 site options were ever looked at. Only four sites were ever considered. ActewAGL was given a Hobson’s choice and, as a result, the government has shoehorned a good project into a less than ideal location.
The third ground for the no-confidence motion is that Mr Stanhope has been suppressing evidence associated with his involvement in the project. This morning, we see yet another revelation of another document that shows that the decision to push industrial facilities to broadacre land closer to homes was a government discussion without public consultation.
On the same day that Actew picked the site, their senior commercial analyst wrote that it was the government’s study that confirmed the availability of the site and that the sites in Hume should not be considered. We also see that the government has failed to follow its own guidelines on public consultation.
The freedom of information process has been abused. On the one hand, the opposition is told that it would not be in the public interest for it to have documents released to it, while on the other hand Jon Stanhope is authorising the selective release of some of the same documents. He has selectively released five pages of materials to the media while withholding at least 3,030 pages of other records. He has refused to table documents in estimates, and he sat alongside officials of his department while they falsely denied the extent of their involvement in the issue.
My requests under the FOI process have revealed that Mr Stanhope is sitting on 3,030 pages of documents. It is within Mr Stanhope’s discretion to release any of these documents to the estimates committee to clear the air, but he has instead acted like a man with something to hide.
The opposition understands that it is acceptable for Mr Stanhope to withhold a small number of documents which may contain commercial-in-confidence information,
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