Page 1913 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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not anticipate that his decision to give the proponents the Hobson’s choice of Tuggeranong block 1671 would raise community anxiety?
How could the Chief Minister expect genuine community awareness when he led them to believe that this project would be located in the Hume industrial precinct rather than within 1½ to two kilometres of the Fadden-Gowrie area, 600 metres from Macarthur and 1.2 kilometres from Gilmore? Why did only some residents in the immediately affected areas get informed by pamphlet, only a fortnight prior to closing dates for objections that a gas-fired power plant would be located within a kilometre of their homes?
What about the residents of Monash and Wanniassa or the residents of the wider Tuggeranong and southern Woden region? Did the Chief Minister consider that residents of these areas would quietly submit themselves to his latest unscrupulous decision? In the factual vacuum that exists in Stanhope-land and in the absence of any government confirmation or denial, or willingness to address the outstanding matters to do with site selection, not to mention the poor excuse for prior public consultation, the people of Canberra, and Tuggeranong in particular, remain suspicious and anxious—and legitimately so. That is why selling the data centre is now a very big ask.
This is where the ACT Property Council, too, do not get it. When tugging their forelocks to Jon Stanhope, they totally ignore the broader community concern as well. It is profits before people.
We are not here arguing the merits of having a significant ICT facility in the territory. The Chief Minister knows that. The opposition have stated on the record, on numerous occasions, that we are supportive of initiatives like the Canberra technology city proposal that will broaden and secure the territory’s economic future. But we are concerned that, in pursuing this proposal in the manner that he has, the Chief Minister has both abandoned the community’s interests and jeopardised the entire project. From determining the site, making false public statements and then misleading the Assembly about aspects of this entire project, it is absolutely clear—as clear as day—that the Chief Minister has been part of the problem rather than gauging and providing community acceptable solutions from the outset.
We grow weary of repeated Labor-speak justifying bad decision making as making apparently hard decisions. After all, this is a government that has a living and breathing internalised policy of “selling backflip as responding to community concerns”. In a jurisdiction where the government now pays mere lip-service to holding real and meaningful public consultation this no-confidence motion today should be a wake-up call that this time they have well and truly got it wrong. They have stuffed it! It beggars belief that after the Tharwa bridge debacle, the closure of Griffith library and the government school closure program they would have the nerve and the audacity to ram through a $2,000 million project—we do not have those very often—against a tide of overwhelming public consternation.
I again urge the government to grasp the community imperative before the opportunity passes us by, before the Chief Minister sanctions a development that will contribute to a loss of faith in statutory process, that will cause further mistrust in government and that will ultimately be judged harshly. I commend the motion.
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