Page 2288 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
appropriate for this site.” The Chief Minister made a decision and this block was offered to Actew. They were never offered 7 of 21. We can have all the semantic arguments about site identification and site selection, but in the end a block had to be offered that was consistent with the cabinet decision and the letter that he wrote to Mr Mackay, and only one block was offered: 1610 of the district of Tuggeranong.
Mr Corbell: Not true and you know it.
MR SMYTH: So it is not true, Mr Corbell? Well, disprove it. Show us the documents. This is what the Deputy Chief Minister said: “If anybody read the document they would know nothing had gone wrong.” Well, show us the documents. All we are saying is: show us the documents. All that the public can do is go by what is in the public arena that has been put there through FOI. All they can go on is what they have got access to. Table the advice. If we are wrong, table the advice.
The problem is that it undermines the LDA processes, it undermines you, Minister Barr, and the ACTPLA process, and it leads to doubt about the process of this government. All that people are asking for is a fair go. People did their due diligence; they checked with ACTPLA about the future of this block, and they made the single most important financial decision of their lives when they bought the home of their dreams. I know that people in Bracker Place, Goldsbrough Close and at the top of Jackie Howe Crescent bought there in order to be close to the horse paddocks for their family, for their kids in the main. They bought there for a specific purpose and they feel misled and betrayed. That is how they feel, and if you do not understand that then you misunderstand at your own peril.
The problem here is that we get interjections from those opposite saying, “It’s not true.” Well, prove us wrong, because the limited documents that have been delivered to us lead to one conclusion: the proponents were dragged, shovelled, pushed and herded from pillar to post, from one site. They were excluded from certain sites that were never offered to them that are entirely adequate for the purpose of this facility. There was a site they wanted. Have no doubt about it: Philip Mitchell said in the estimates that there was a substantial opportunity cost. I asked what that meant. I was told that what it meant was that there was money involved. So we took the profits before the people of Tuggeranong and the people of south Woden; we took the profits and we pushed them to a block where it should never have gone to. They wanted—
Mr Corbell: Nonsense!
MR SMYTH: “Nonsense,” interjects Mr Corbell. Well, prove me wrong. Table the documents that prove me wrong. They were shunted to another site that is inadequate because the work had not been done properly to discover that there were Aboriginal artefacts on that site. So they were then pushed to another site. This is what people cannot understand, and this is the problem that the Chief Minister has created. (Second speaking period taken.) This is the problem, and it is the actions of the Chief Minister that are eroding confidence—his arrogant approach to this. His refusal to answer questions, his refusal to table documents and his refusal to come clean are not only tarnishing his own reputation and highlighting his arrogance but also undermining the processes which LDA and ACTPLA go through, and which all
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .