Page 1885 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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of part of this site. In light of the uncertainty this would introduce for your planning, your representatives stated that their ranking of Hume sites was now:
• First, the site originally sought at Block 7 Section 21 (to the southeast of the Monaro Highway);
• Second, the site at part Block 18 Section 23 (located to the northwest of the Monaro Highway and north of Mugga Lane) provided the heritage examination lasted not longer than three months and that ACT Heritage could assure both the Government and ActewAGL that development could proceed after that time, no matter what was found on the site; and
• Third, the Broadacre sites at Block 1610, District of Tuggeranong (located on the western side of the Monaro Highway south of Mugga Lane).
Further, your representatives stated that ActewAGL was willing to fund the heritage examination of part of Block 18 Section 23 (expected to be around $100,000).
The Government and ActewAGL representatives agreed that the three sites would be urgently examined and that advice would be provided to me on their respective merits.
That letter was dated, as I said, 19 July 2007. It postdates all of the documentation tabled and relied upon by the Leader of the Opposition for his spurious motion. The letter is quite plain, Mr Speaker. All options were on the table; all sites were on offer; all sites were being urgently examined. The government was not strongarming ActewAGL onto a particular site, and there is not a skerrick of evidence to support the opposition leader’s construction of events—not one.
To start hurling about accusations such as those contained in the grounds concocted by the Leader of the Opposition, it helps to start with something called evidence. He does not have that because it does not exist. Mr Mackay gave his personal assurance at the estimates committee, essentially under oath, that he was not in any way pressured to change his site preference. One can only assume that the Leader of the Opposition is accusing Mr Mackay—Canberra Citizen of the Year and Chief Executive Officer of ActewAGL—of misleading him too, along with a number of senior public servants of impeccable reputation.
I now turn to the next point in the motion—the assertion that I mismanaged the process associated with the project and, as a consequence, cost the territory around $1 billion in investment. We can dispense with this, of course, in short order. We could replay last night’s WIN news, in fact—I would quite enjoy that, if it could be arranged. We could turn to today’s Canberra Times. Bluntly, not a dollar of investment has been lost or jeopardised, and there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that it has been. I refer to a letter from Mr Mackay of this week, which states:
There has been a great deal of speculation in recent weeks to the effect that ActewAGL is no longer planning to build a gas-fired power station to improve the territory’s security of supply. This follows ActewAGL’s recent decision to
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