Page 5084 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011
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opposition thinks we should be doing. I cannot see why it is a mark of failure that there are still things to do in the Assembly. But I am probably on a different planet from the Liberal Party here.
Mr Seselja: We would all agree on that.
MS LE COUTEUR: That might be the one thing that we can all agree on! Mr Seselja spent a lot of time talking about the inadequacies of the Greens, and I will not go any further into those because I think his arguments were entirely spurious. But on the one area he talked about—outdoor cafes—unfortunately he got it wrong. It would appear that he probably has seen the fact that the Greens put in a submission on the outdoor cafe policy. The Greens are very concerned about outdoor cafes. We actually think they are a great thing, and we were concerned about some of the excessive red tape involved, particularly in terms of some of the visual appearance rules, which appeared to be simply a desire to kill creativity. We pointed out a number of cafes which, under these rules, probably could not operate. I am very pleased that these rules do not appear to be enforced, because some of these cafes are still operating. I largely agree with the comments that Mr Seselja made, attributed to Mrs Dunne, about some of the red tape around outdoor cafes.
We put a submission to the government in June last year on this subject. Unfortunately, Mr Seselja did not read our submission very well, or he would have understood what the Greens actually said about outdoor heaters. The Greens recommend that they should only be allowed in semi-enclosed spaces which have reflective surfaces on ceilings to ensure the best use of the heat produced. We note that outdoor heaters have already been completely banned by the European Commission. One solution may be that adopted by Tosolini’s, which is to provide blankets for the customers wishing to sit outside. This has been a popular solution applied in many European cities also.
It may be that members of the opposition do not often go to cafes, particularly at night in winter, but, if they do, they would notice that the cafe owners of Canberra are not stupid. The cafe owners of Canberra, where they are heating outside, have all done some degree of enclosing. Generally speaking, they have reflective roofs, because gas costs a lot of money and some of them also have considerable environmental concerns. The Liberal Party has misrepresented the Greens’ views.
The other major problem that the Liberal and the Labor parties seem to have with my motion is that it is comprehensive. It is totally bizarre that the Liberal and Labor parties think it is a problem that I am trying not to have a one-line, simplistic solution to the issue, that it is just too much for them to deal with. We are professional legislators. Our job is to look at motions and be prepared to deal with a degree of complexity. I am not going for complexity for complexity’s sake. This motion was an awful lot longer at the beginning. At one stage I said: “Look, I’m not going to bother with the speech. I’ll just read out the motion. That will take the 15 minutes.”
We cannot say that just because something takes a few lines means it is wrong. Civic is a complicated situation. As I have been saying to people, if there was a simple, one-line solution, I actually think the government would have done it. There is not a
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