Page 1432 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 14 May 2014
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The government has been consulting with industry on the development of a functional brief. Mr Barr has spoken about that in his remarks, so I will not speak about that in more detail. He has indicated the time line on that, and the next step will be the development of reference designs, which give options for the look and feel of the facility based on the parameters set out in the functional brief.
There are other technical studies, such as traffic management and survey work, that will obviously need to be done. The issue of the business model for the development and operation of the centre is yet to be sorted out. As I have touched on, there is a lot of work still to be done. Mr Smyth has put forward the case in this place for a trust model, which has been touched on again today, but there are other options, and these things will need to be sorted out in due course.
It is interesting the way the Liberal Party talk about different things. Light rail and the convention centre are in quite similar places. There are a whole lot of question marks because the work needs to be done, the planning needs to be worked through and the analysis needs to be finalised. But Mr Smyth and his Liberal Party colleagues have no qualms coming here and saying, “We must have a convention centre.” Yet when those same questions need to be answered and that same work still needs to be done over light rail, they have no qualms in asking all sorts of questions and casting all sorts of aspersions on it.
It would be welcome if there were a little bit of honesty about the fact that big projects like this have work to be done on them and that there are times when not all of the information is available. A little bit of honesty about the similarity of those things would be a very welcome addition to the debate in this place.
It is disappointing that the federal government has declined to support the development of the Australia forum in Canberra at this time. I would have thought it would be right up their alley, having called themselves the infrastructure government and having made it clear to the states and territories that they want to support investment in private sector infrastructure. This is a project where a contribution at this point could have really helped accelerate things. The ACT government will now have to fill that void. That sort of commitment to Canberra from the federal government would have seen them making that sort of investment and assisting us to get these things moving forward.
I am looking forward to seeing the development of the Australia forum over coming years, and I thank the Canberra Convention Bureau and the Canberra Business Council and their many members who have and are continuing to put in considerable effort and energy into their work in advocating for this facility. I believe it is the sort of facility we want here in Canberra; it is a facility we need for the future of this city. I am pleased the government is continuing to progress the project and is continuing to investigate options and seek opportunities for funding to get it off the ground.
As I spoke about earlier, there is a commitment in the parliamentary agreement to move this forward. Anybody who comes in here and suggests that the government is not committed to that is simply doing it for reasons that suit their political agendas. I
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