Page 2126 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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practical measure that the ACT government put in place to recognise the importance of family, of our community and of spending time with your family and with the community is disparaged in the way that it was and—
Mr Mulcahy: They are setting an example of work-life balance: less work.
MR BARR: treated the way it was, by the comments of the Greens and the Liberals earlier, and the interjections of Mr Mulcahy.
It would appear that there is only one party in this place that is prepared to take some action in support of a work-life balance and in support of families and our community, and that is the Australian Labor Party. We very strongly support this day and this recognition of the fact that an entitlement was stripped away for purely ideological reasons. We look forward to the overturn of the Work Choices legislation and we hope that we have the support of the Liberal opposition in going up to the hill and talking to their colleagues in the Senate in the hope that they will not obstruct the removal of the Work Choices legislation, that this silly, punitive measure to ban union picnic day can be removed and that things can return to how they were in the ACT prior to the Work Choices legislation.
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (7.55): I stand with my Brindabella hat on to represent the Tuggeranong community in reference to one particular matter under this line item, and that is under the subheading of special projects, that area within the Chief Minister’s Department.
Mrs Dunne: Project facilitation.
MR PRATT: I echo all of that which Mrs Dunne has just outlined in terms of the questions around judgement, and I want to add a couple of quick comments only to what Mrs Dunne had to say. It is very important that we stress here that the judgement of the Chief Minister, his office and his department on a very large project, being the gas-fired power station and the social, environmental and commercial impacts of that project, certainly have left a lot to be desired.
Did anybody not think to alert the Tuggeranong community about the specifics and the facts around the proposed gas-fired power station close to Tuggeranong residences—specifically the Macarthur residences but really even out to a radius encompassing Gilmore, Gowrie, Mawson, Farrer and Isaacs, if indeed not further? No, that was not the case. There was a thundering silence for many months during those early project identification, project concept, phases. Nobody did.
So we arrived on the night of 28 April at the Tuggeranong Community Council meeting—a special meeting, by the way, forced upon a reluctant ActewAGL by the community—and saw 330 people realise for the very first time the actual siting, the actual size, the actual footprint, the actual power and the actual output of this particular project in terms of emissions: the 255 milli-units per metric tonne of nitrous oxide, one half of one per cent below the national standard for that type of chemical emission. We saw the community for the first time picking up on these facts.
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