Page 413 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
In relation to the arboretum, as once again Ms Le Couteur has said, there are civil contractors on site. There was an opportunity to advance that work and the decision was taken. As the Treasurer has just said in her response in closing the in-principle debate, we have never suggested that this was our stimulus package, and we will deliver one. But there are elements of this bill that are part and parcel of that, and this is one. This is a multifaceted initiative or response. At one level it allows us to continue with a significant piece of community infrastructure; at another level it allows us to take advantage of a civil contractor on site, with work that can be gainfully done at ultimate savings to the territory, while generating or driving continuing work, and it is very important that we continue to do that.
The majority of this work is a continuation of civil works but some of the works will certainly involve quite heavily a significant community organisation, the southern tablelands ecological park group, who are accepting responsibility for a significant plot within the arboretum for the development of essentially a regional showcase of native flora, and some of the funding will go to that.
I will conclude on a third point; I did not mean to go on this long. The funding for the advice, or the consultant, in relation to the solar farm proposal is important. This is a significant project. It requires us to seek the best possible advice on the way forward. It is quite complex, it is difficult, but it is incredibly important. It is an important project and I think we all accept that.
So these are three initiatives, all fully justifiable and quite appropriate for a bill such as this—accepting of course, as the Treasurer has indicated, that in an ideal world one would wish always to be able to avoid legislation being introduced and debated in such a short time. But from time to time there are overriding interests that require us all to just knuckle down and work through a process such as this, while all of course pursuing our respective responsibilities in that regard.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (8.35): The Chief Minister speaks of the ideal world and how this process is undesirable. Yet again, that confirms what we have said. But if people would cast their minds back to the last six months of the last Assembly, bills were regularly debated within days of being put in this place because we had a pattern of laziness from a government that had not ordered its business properly. As Mr Hanson pointed out this morning, there are numerous motions and pieces of legislation, some of which have been brought back into this place today—
Mr Corbell: Madam Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order going to relevance.
MR SMYTH: Under what standing order?
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth, would you please resume your seat.
Mr Corbell: The debate needs to be relevant to the question before the chair. Debates about how the government behaved or did not behave in relation to legislation that was dealt with during the previous Assembly are not relevant to the question before the chair. I would ask you to direct Mr Smyth to remain relevant to the question before the chair.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .