Page 2331 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 12 August 2014
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Mr Coe: The sky bridge.
MR HANSON: Sorry, the sky bridge from the ministerial suites so that ministers could walk across the sky bridge and look down on the mere people below. Perhaps a view of the arboretum was a requirement. I do not know if the new scope has that in the ROI. Perhaps the minister can tell us whether the sky bridge is still a requirement in that. No, it is not; it has gone. What a shame!
Mr Coe: It’s a tunnel now.
MR HANSON: A tunnel? Maybe there will be a platform for light rail. Maybe there will be a new platform for light rail; a tunnel that runs down. Madam Assistant Speaker, I do foreshadow that there will be some further debate about this issue. There is a motion in the Assembly and we will have an opportunity to debate this tomorrow.
Mr Barr: You’ve managed to outrage the Property Council.
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Mr Barr, if you have a point of order to raise, please stand up and say it. Otherwise please listen to Mr Hanson in silence.
MR HANSON: Mr Barr says I might have managed to outrage the Property Council. Of course, my job here is to represent the good people of the ACT and to make sure that every single dollar that is spent by Mr Barr is done prudently, and I will continue to do that.
Some of the logic does not stack up. The government on one hand says, “Everyone’s got to be consolidated. Everyone’s got to be in a single building or in a campus, except where we want to build something in Gungahlin.” So why is it that a centralised function like Shared Services is sent to Gungahlin but we have to make sure that everybody else is within a 10-minute walk of the Assembly? What is the logic in the 10-minute walk from the Assembly? It does not stack up.
We have significant office vacancy in the ACT, across the ACT. This project will exacerbate that problem. It will increase the vacancy rates. Anyway, we will come back to that debate tomorrow. Maybe we will have further developed the Star Wars narrative and worked out further characters.
Mr Coe: Simon Corbell is definitely a storm-trooper.
MR HANSON: Simon is a storm-trooper. We will have further character developments in the ongoing saga of the death star.
On a more serious note there is the issue of Mr Fluffy. I want to return to that in this portfolio area. I note that the government announced at lunchtime a reference group to support the rollout of support for Mr Fluffy, provide advice to the government and provide representation to affected families. I think that is a good initiative. What I would say, though, is that we need to make sure, as I have said before, that the task
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