Page 366 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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advice of the proponent. That is hardly the kind of the process that instils confidence in the community. It is hardly the kind of process that seeks to protect the public interest.
If we have a situation where the Chief Minister, through his officials, is accepting the advice of proponents over and above the advice of several other government agencies, it is very difficult to have confidence in the process and it is no wonder that we saw the situation which any reasonable observer could have predicted. In fact, I believe ACTPLA, in some of the documents, specifically predicted this, that there would be a huge amount of community opposition to a development of this type at this location. It was not having that arm’s length process which got this government into trouble and it is a damning assessment from the Auditor-General. The auditor goes on:
… CMD did not seek to clarify issues and conduct some independent checking of information provided by proponents … No analysis has yet been conducted by the Government to ensure statements made by the proponents, particularly in regards to benefits to the Territory, were reliable.
CMD did not always adequately address valid issues raised by agencies during the coordination process … Government agencies did not formally assess and rank relative merits of the proponents’ suggested sites against a clear set of criteria.
This was one of our key critiques during this process, that the government did not properly consider all of the sites. They did not do the job properly. Of course, with their preferred sites ruled out, or the sites that they wanted to hold on to ruled out, we saw the situation where an inappropriate site was chosen. An inappropriate site and an inappropriate development were attempted to be foisted onto the people of Tuggeranong. The Auditor-General goes on:
A suitable site that meets the commercial needs of the proponents may not necessarily equate to the optimum site from the Territory’s point of view, when taking into account wider public interest criteria.
That is a fairly commonsense conclusion, but it is extraordinary that the government did not see it that way and it takes an Auditor-General’s report many months later to highlight that. Of course, the proponents are going to act in their commercial interests. The site that is best for the proponents is not necessarily the site that is best for the community, an argument we have made long and hard. In fact, when we made that argument, when I put that to the Chief Minister in estimates, he criticised me and said that ministers and governments should not be making judgements in the interests of the community. That is what he said.
Mr Corbell: He did not.
MR SESELJA: It is there.
Mr Corbell: What a load of nonsense.
MR SESELJA: You can check the transcript. He suggested that it would be inappropriate in a planning process like this for ministers to be making judgements in
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