Page 377 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
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I think it is important that we look very, very closely at the relationship between ActewAGL and the government, the unclear roles of government departments and, in particular, the failure to act in the first instance and the failure to inform and represent the community. Again the report is littered with references to where the community felt that they had been sidelined, where they felt that they had been ignored. When they or bodies that the government put in place were getting too close to the truth they were simply shut down.
The government overreacts and puts in place a health impact assessment to try to take some of the heat out of the situation, but when the independent members on the health impact assessment start saying, “Hang on, we have got serious concerns,” what happens? They get sacked. The health impact assessment is taken over by somebody else and we get a second process, which is the EIS, something which the government for a long time refused to do but then, in their desperation, attempted to do.
There is nothing in this entire process that puts any glory on the government or should give anybody confidence in this government to handle major infrastructure projects. They did not get the right numbers. They quoted numbers without validating them. They did not listen to Treasury. They did not listen to officials. They did not have processes in place and, most of all, they refused to listen to the community.
You have to remember that this is a community that told the government in 2004 they did not want the enlarged Karralika facility; they were happy for the existing facility but they did not want it any bigger. But the government at Christmas tried to sneak that one through. This is the government that wanted to initially put the prison there but the community reacted and said, “No, please, it’s a horse paddock. Leave it as it is.” This is the government that wanted to put a dragway there. That was a great meeting at the Vikings Club. There were 1,500 people—600 people inside, 900 people outside—trying to send a message to the government, “Listen to us. We appreciate our bush capital; we appreciate the planning processes that we have. Leave us alone.”
You wanted Karralika there but you did not get your way. You wanted the prison there but you did not get your way. You wanted the dragway there but you did not get your way. Instead of taking the message, what do you do? You ramp it up. “We’ll give you a data centre with a bonus power station.” You have to listen to the community. I think what the Auditor-General’s report highlights quite comprehensively is the failure of a government to listen, and that is why we are here today.
It is an important day. As we have said from the start—and let me make it quite clear again—the Canberra Liberals were in favour of the project but not on that site. And our position has been validated by the Auditor-General’s report and our position today is validated by the fact that we are discussing a bill to remove it from that site to a more appropriate site.
It is a more appropriate site because it is zoned industrial. It is what it was put there for. It offers the certainty that the territory plan should offer to development. It offers a process that should be easy to get through, instead of the tortuous process that the government put in place.
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