Page 5993 - Week 14 - Thursday, 8 December 2011
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you should do it. That is not a good rationale for supporting legislation. That is why we will not be supporting the blank cheque that this legislation represents.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (4.30): The Greens welcome these amendments to the legislation, and I thank the Attorney-General for bringing them forward. They arise from issues that, as the attorney said, we discussed with both the minister’s office and officials from the directorate. The amendments clarify and improve parts of the legislation, and I appreciate the government’s bringing them forward. They were issues that we thought were quite important. While some of it is about simply spelling it out, it is important—not just for those of us who have been involved in the discussion but for those who pick it up and read it at a later time—that the legislation is very explicit on some of these matters.
I would like to touch on the general principles of them. The matter of the geographic definition is quite important. I flagged that during the in-principle discussion. I do believe, and the Greens think this is a good outcome, that “Australian capital region” is the right definition. If we prescribed this to only within the ACT, it would be both unnecessarily parochial and also not the most efficient option.
We know that here in the ACT we do not have the best wind resources. We have probably got them along the top of the ranges of Namadgi, but I do not think anybody is suggesting we put wind farms up there. But just to the north of our border, in areas such as Crookwell, Yass and Lake George, there is an extremely good wind resource. To say that these things can only be built inside the ACT border would be cutting off opportunities that we need not cut off.
I think that there is also a clear recognition that the ACT does sit in a region. We have our artificial boundary around us, but much of what we do has a regional focus. If we think about simply where people live, many people commute across our region for work purposes. When it comes to areas such as trades and construction, there are many people moving around our region on a regular basis for work purposes. That has been well documented.
There was a recent call for the construction of hostels in the ACT for construction industry workers to stay in during the week when they are in town. And all you have got to do is drive out on the Hume Highway or somewhere on a Friday afternoon; you will see all the tradies heading back out of town. I went to Wagga myself last weekend; the number of utes and various construction vehicles on the road heading back into the region was testament to the fact that we have a highly integrated region. And a lot of people are increasingly talking about food from the Canberra or capital region.
We are seeing this understanding that the ACT borders are quite narrow, in a sense, and that the region is one where there are a lot of close economic linkages. The transport linkages across the region are quite poor in some ways. They are an area of focus, certainly between Canberra and Queanbeyan. Ms Bresnan has discussed with me the idea of re-establishing the train line to Cooma as an example of how we might improve transport in the region and enable workers and goods to move around the
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