Page 2374 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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housing affordability—that poor people in Belconnen can live next to a smelly diesel generator? That would be a good way of driving down land prices for your constituents, Mr Speaker, and mine.
Mr Stanhope: It is a backup generator, like the one they have at Canberra Hospital; it is the same as that. It is for when the power goes out.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stanhope!
MR PRATT (Brindabella) (1.39 am): Mr Speaker—
Mrs Dunne: I understand. We are not as bare in the brains as you might think.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Enough.
Mrs Dunne: We understand. The diesel has got to be there all the time, though.
Mr Stanhope: Mrs Dunne, you have just illustrated that you have not got a clue about the proposal. You could not possibly have had a briefing. If you did, you did not listen.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Stanhope! Cease interjecting. Mrs Dunne, order!
MR PRATT: I suggest that she has got more of a clue than you, Chief Minister, given the way this process has been—
MR SPEAKER: We do not need your help, Mr Pratt. You will provoke more trouble than you’re worth.
MR PRATT: I am focusing, unremarkably, on the power station fiasco in Tuggeranong and ActewAGL’s very disappointing handling of that matter. It is clear that ActewAGL and the consortium were hell-bent on building, initially, a 210-megawatt peaking power station combined with a data centre. They were hell-bent on getting that cleared and built with minimum fuss. The deeply disappointing thing for me, as I represent my community, is the arrogance displayed by ActewAGL in this particular venture.
However, putting that aside, it has also been communicated to me that ActewAGL were led up the garden path by a very lazy or compliant government through its agencies, in their stupid decision to select an untenable piece of dirt for the combined peaking station and data centre at block 1671. Whilst we are talking about the thinking behind the gas-fired power station, what rocket scientist in the government and its agencies led ActewAGL up the garden path to think they could ram in a 210-megawatt power station 600 metres from Macarthur, with nitrous oxide emissions of 255 micro particles per metric tonne? How did they think that they would not stir up a hornet’s nest? What wizard in the government ever thought that a monstrous $2,000 million project, with those sorts of variables in play, and with a nitrous oxide emission that was one-half of one per cent below the national standard, based on a faulty plume test study, could be put there, cheek by jowl with the residents? That is why ActewAGL were led right up the garden path.
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