Page 1939 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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The second element of good governance in which the Chief Minister has failed is that of the processes of government and the competencies of ministers. Our system of parliament demands that we perennially challenge this element. This is no better illustrated than by two factors: the first is the downsizing of the project from $2 billion to $1 billion; the second is borne out in ACTPLA’s preliminary assessment of the proposal in which ACTPLA noted:
No information was provided as to why this site has been chosen over any other.
Where is the process, firstly, to downsize the project? It seems it was done with the stroke of a pen, purely and simply in response to a community backlash in a vain attempt to abate that backlash. It would seem that the Chief Minister is ready and willing to let the project and its impact on our economy suffer from his own raw stubbornness and his refusal to acknowledge the shortcomings of that Tuggeranong site. It is a case of “I’ve gone too far now to be able to do yet another backflip and sell it as responding to community concerns”.
Then there is the ACTPLA assessment, which went on to say:
Given the abundance of comparable broadacre sites, a matrix indicating the order of importance for site selection prerequisites and a comparison between other useful sites would be useful to understand that this [the Tuggeranong site] is the best location for this proposal.
The third failure of the Chief Minister to uphold the qualities of good governance is in the area of transparency. It is the people who elect us to the Assembly who demand that we test the transparency of government decision making. What does it mean, Mr Speaker? Fundamentally, it means governments actually have to interact with people; they have to consult on issues that concern and affect them; they have to be up-front with people. In short, governments have to trust and acknowledge the intelligence of the people. To see the most spectacular failure of the Stanhope Labor government in this area, I go back to 18 January 2003 where we saw the failure of this government to warn the people of Canberra that a most horrific and fierce firestorm was on its way to the urban fringe. We know the result of that.
That was a failure of the government, as this is, to trust and acknowledge the intelligence of the people of Canberra. It is a total lack of faith by this government in the capacity of the people of Canberra to respond intelligently to the situation. Again, this government’s own 2004 Labor platform states:
The fundamental principle underlying the governing of the ACT should be the development of the highest degree of community participation in the decision making process as possible. It is a basic right of all ACT citizens to be involved in making decisions, which affect them.
But then, in the estimates committee we hear the Chief Minister say in relation to consulting with the community:
He—
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