Page 4608 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 19 October 2011

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(iv) delivers the most financially responsible option for the ACT budget and taxpayers …

Again, I would hope these are things that all of the Assembly agree to.

This motion also called upon the government to do things much more usefully than Mr Seselja’s motion, which just says “no, we don’t like it”.” The motion of the Assembly on 24 August called upon the government to:

(a) ensure the feasibility studies and market testing both include:

(i) examination of the adaptive reuse of existing office buildings; and

(ii) consideration of the options for an ACT Government office precinct, as opposed to just a single building model …

We said: “Government, go away and look at what is out there. Look at better options than what you have been looking at, better options than a single monolith.”

Point (b) said:

… ensure that whole of life cycle analysis of the environmental impact is considered …

The Greens are on about whole of life cycle analysis. We have always been on about that. For a project which potentially will spend this much money and potentially, as the Liberal Party have said, is the most expensive capital project this government or any ACT government has ever embarked on, it is important that we do a whole of life cycle analysis.

Then we said:

I would like to emphasise that this is something that the government should do, instead of having debates about one bit or another bit, instead of having the situation where for years the government vehemently says, “No, we could not possibly put something in Gungahlin,” only to turn around—I do not know why; it was hopefully for planning reasons, possibly for electoral reasons—and decide, “No, everything we said before was not quite right; we will now do Gungahlin.” What we need is a strategy. I am really surprised that the Liberal Party, in their motion, did not call on the government to do a government office accommodation strategy.

Finally, the motion passed on 24 August said:

… report back to the Assembly on progress by December 2011 …

We are in the middle of October now, so we are going to be having a report back in the order of two months time. I would think that this Assembly should say, “Yes, the

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