Page 2268 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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It is my recollection that, in the Fifth Assembly, on at least two separate occasions, the opposition attempted to slow down the process of Mr Corbell’s reforms and speed up the process of the reform of the Land Act and the reform of the territory plan. Mr Corbell said, “No, no, we have to do it my way,” which was the wrong way, quite frankly. After all the reforms that Mr Corbell brought in in 2002, I asked the question, which I was able to ask again last year during the passage of this legislation, “After the passage of this, after it is all bedded down, will the system be any better?” The answer has been a resounding no. I asked the same question last year, with the passage of the new planning system, the new territory plan: “After all this has bedded down, will the system be any better?” So far it has not been.
I normally give such extensive legislation at least a year. So the authority has to lift its game and I hope that next year, when we are on the government benches and we are talking about the budget, we will be able to say that, as a result of the work done and the stringencies put in place, the planning system is simpler, faster, better.
Mr Barr: And more effective.
MRS DUNNE: And more effective. If it is simpler, faster, better and more effective, it will be because of the work of people like Mr Seselja and people in the industry who have been trying to keep this system operating well.
The breakdown of the system that we see in ACTPLA is characterised in a couple of places. One may not necessarily be originally ACTPLA’s fault, that is, the occupation of territory land out in what used to be the Cotter forest, the caretaker’s cottage, which, until the day after the minister appeared before estimates, had been occupied by the Farrell family for some 26 years. There was obviously a mistake. Somewhere along the line the paperwork was lost. There is an unexplained chain of events. At the end of the day the people doing the evicting were ACTPLA.
It is simply not good enough to say, “We got ourselves in an invidious situation and we will now claim that these people had been squatting.” The minister implied it. Although I had raised the issue, he raised the implication that these people were squatting. Other members, including, I think, Mr Mulcahy, also made the implication that these people were squatters.
I do not think people who receive the keys to the front door are squatters. They may have had an irregular arrangement but they entered that arrangement with the compliance of the territory authorities, perhaps a long time ago. But they were given the keys to the front door and they maintained the property in a way that it would not have been maintained. We would not be now questioning whether or not this property should be entered on the Heritage Register if it had not been for the stewardship of the Farrell family over a very long period of time.
This is an appalling situation. The Farrell family came to the realisation that eventually they would have to vacate this place. But the mean-spiritedness of kicking these people out and then putting in a security guard and putting a security fence around it, because you had to maintain the security of the place, is a little bit hard to
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