Page 4191 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 21 September 2010
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MRS DUNNE: Minister, what is your response to the Human Rights and Discrimination Commissioner’s public statement that “the community made this law”, implying that the community must therefore live by it?
MR CORBELL: It is a highly appropriate observation for the human rights commissioner to make. As I said in my previous answer, the human rights commissioner and the human rights commission do not establish what is lawful or what is unlawful when it comes to discrimination. This place does. Therefore, if Mr Seselja—or Mrs Dunne or others—believes that it should be lawful to discriminate against young people because of their age, then they should come to this place and seek to amend the law. They should not criticise Dr Watchirs for upholding her statutory obligations to explain the law and to educate the community about the law that this place puts in place.
Parliamentary triangle—pay parking
MS HUNTER: My question is to the Chief Minister and it concerns pay parking in the parliamentary triangle. Chief Minister, what are you doing to progress the introduction of widespread pay parking in the parliamentary triangle and how soon can this commence?
MR STANHOPE: I thank Ms Hunter for her question. As I think Ms Hunter and other members of this place would be aware, I have for a number of years urged on the commonwealth the importance to Canberra of pay parking being introduced in the parliamentary triangle. It is an issue that I have spoken on and a position for which I have advocated for a number of years now. In the last year, for the first time, the commonwealth, through the NCA, has engaged in a formal way. Previously there have been expressions of support, most particularly from Gary Rake and the NCA, around the issue of pay parking. The issue has now been agreed to have been progressed by the establishment of a joint working party, chaired by the NCA, into the issue. I have to say at this stage I am not quite sure how active the work of that particular group has been, but I am encouraged that the commonwealth has now agreed to engage seriously with the ACT government in advancing the prospect of pay parking within the parliamentary triangle. I think it is very necessary, for a whole range of reasons.
I am, of course, conscious—and I believe other members of this place are aware—of the fact that the commonwealth recently sold a large piece of land within the triangle to two local developers. Those developers, the Domazet Group and the Morris Group, have resolved to provide commercial parking on that site in the short term. As I understand it, they prepared their proposals for the development of that block, and that also has implications for the parking landscape within the parliamentary triangle, to the extent that all the advice to me suggests that the decision by the Domazet and Morris groups to charge for parking, to provide a commercial parking arrangement, will certainly attract the fringe benefits tax arrangements, and that, of course, has implications most particularly for the commonwealth as an employer.
It is an issue that I have pursued quite actively. There is a joint working party. There is an agreement now by the commonwealth to engage with the territory. It is a matter
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