Page 2906 - Week 07 - Thursday, 7 June 2012

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MR SPEAKER: Members!

MS LE COUTEUR: Members! Sorry. I am not the Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Ms Le Couteur, I am in the chair at the moment; you just have the speaking rights.

MS LE COUTEUR: I apologise; I could not help myself. I think it is just showing that this is an incredibly vexed issue. It is really disappointing that we are debating it yet again.

We have agonised over this at huge length. Probably one of the things that agonising at huge length has demonstrated, at least to the Greens if not to everyone else, is that the reason we are agonising at great length is that there are two solutions which are viable solutions. No doubt one is better than the other, but you cannot say that either solution is without merit. Both solutions clearly have merit. Both solutions clearly have a lot of people who feel passionately about them. Some of the people who feel passionately are sitting here in this room. Some of them are MLAs; some of them are not.

That makes it a really hard thing for the Assembly to make a decision about. This is really not a very good way of decision making. That is why I think that the situation we have with planning, where DAs do not go anywhere near the Assembly, is a very good one. We are not the best people for making this sort of decision.

That is why the Greens supported the inquiry into the Fitters Workshop. It was, and still is, a very vexed issue. We thought, “Okay, an inquiry, a three-member inquiry.” Fortunately, none of the people on the education committee had been involved in the Fitters Workshop debate before that. I was very pleased that it did not go to the planning committee because I have made comments on this subject before. So I thought, “Okay, good; we have got a way through.” Then the inquiry did its report. Basically I felt that it was a very good report.

One of the things that were most concerning was this. According to Mr Hanson, who was a member of the inquiry—Mr Hanson in his speech said this—the report had been unanimous but afterwards Ms Porter changed her mind and put in a dissenting report. I found that incredibly concerning because that basically said that the arguments were persuasive but there were some other unknown issues that changed Ms Porter’s mind. That was really fairly negative.

Looking back at the whole sorry saga here, it does not seem that the government has really consulted about the actual fate of the Fitters Workshop. There have been some other consultations about the arts precinct, but it does not seem that the Fitters Workshop has actually been a matter of public consultation. It is certainly a question which I have asked the minister about a number of times in briefings, and we have not quite got to that.


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