Page 3917 - Week 10 - Thursday, 28 August 2008

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MR STANHOPE: It is fairly straightforward. It is totally unambiguous. He is not aware of any requirement or demand at any time by the government. This is an outrageous attempt to actually rewrite the facts and to broadcast what is a falsehood. It is a falsehood. It is not true. It was the proponents’ project. It was the proponents’ application. They were the proponents’ requirements in relation to how the project might work.

At every stage, of course, the government has insisted and continues to assert that the project will not proceed unless it clears all statutory requirements and hurdles. That was always the case and remains the case. This is not a government proposal. These are not our requirements or our suggestions. We simply ask that they be subjected fairly and openly to the statutory planning process.

MR SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Mr Smyth?

MR SMYTH: Thank you, Mr Speaker, for my last supplementary with you as the Speaker. Minister, how can you contend that your government did not interfere in the affairs of a corporation and did not interfere in the planning process when your government lawyers included specific requirements in legal documents that compelled ActewAGL to make a development application that included power station plans to provide for a surplus 90 megawatts of power at all times above and beyond the needs of the data centre?

MR STANHOPE: We did not. I can only say so many times that those claims are false, that they are not true. We get to the point where we need to simply stop using such polite language—that the claim or the statement is untrue—and use perhaps slightly blunter and more direct language in relation to what it is that the Liberal Party is putting about today. But let me repeat, respecting the norms of the place, that the claim is without substance.

Mrs Dunne: Mr Speaker, in accordance with standing order 213, I move:

That the document quoted from by Mr Stanhope (Chief Minister) be presented to the Assembly.

Question put:

That Mrs Dunne’s motion be agreed to.

The Assembly voted—

Question so resolved in the negative.

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