Page 1898 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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We have seen a lot of documents about those first two Hume blocks. We have seen very few about the chosen block—across Mugga Lane from the tip at east Macarthur. We have seen one internal ACTPLA document which raised many of the questions that the Greens, the opposition and members of the community have been raising, including reference to the abundance of comparable broadacre sites and a whole bunch of planning issues around energy, greenhouse impacts and infrastructure requirements.
These documents existed at the time of the committee hearings and they existed while this no-confidence motion was brewing. Yet the government did not show the information to me. Why not? It certainly cast useful light on the genesis of this saga as it has developed so far, and it indicates that ACTPLA was probably unlikely to approve that initial PA. Did the government think I could not be trusted to have the correct interpretation of that document? This selective leaking and eking out of information does not do anything to help my trust in the candour of the government.
It is important not to presume too much on a serious matter like this, but I find it hard to accept that there was no written discussion on the matter before the application for the Mugga Lane block was made to the LDA. Either that written discussion has been kept from us or the business around site selection for the largest commercial project ever undertaken in the ACT, involving top business people and the top bureaucrats in the ACT, is a very loose and informal one, principally conducted over the phone or over coffee. That is the only possible conclusion.
We see no documents from ActewAGL, the LDA or the Chief Minister’s Department that address or even acknowledge these concerns—or other air quality and noise impact concerns. Nor do we see any documents that shed any light on the thinking that led to the shift from Hume to Mugga Lane. Today’s newspaper tells us about a study on Hume—the Hume industrial study, which I have been asking about for months, dated September 2007—that led to the shift from Hume to Mugga Lane. All the government agencies, including Actew, would have seen it. It recommended against the power station in Hume. The Canberra Times today features Actew’s John Mackay professing strongly that, despite that report—I guess it is ActewAGL now, Actew later—in a formal sense, block 7, 21 in Hume was always available. This assurance is starting to sound hollow, given the apparently informal nature of the eventual site selection.
Today’s front page announcement of a $650 million power station in Williamsdale provides some cover for the government on the loss of development issue. If this project falls over on economic or environmental grounds, that will be months down the track. By the way, I hope that the fact that Mr Mackay is saying that there are not many people around so he does not anticipate many problems does not mean that he has forgotten that this power plant too will be in an environment.
There are a couple of specific points on evidence in estimates to consider. The fact that the Chief Minister sat silently while one of his officers was admonished for telling the truth and then misled the committee by lying about the extent of the Chief Minister’s Department’s involvement in the site identification process is, on the face of it, highly improper. The Chief Minister knew that his department was intimately
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