Page 2902 - Week 09 - Thursday, 13 August 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Remember those days: “Once the open space network has been fully identified and debated by the Legislative Assembly, a Labor government will move to have these land policies entrenched by referendum in the territory plan. This will mean that that open space will only be allowed to be used and developed if it is explicitly approved by a two-thirds majority vote of the Legislative Assembly. It also means that we can have certainty in maintaining access.”
Blah, blah, blah—2001: “I am the defender of the open space.” Here he is in the Assembly to ram it through, to circumvent standing orders so that we cannot have an extra month for proposals that are going to stretch out decades and involve millions, if not tens or hundreds of millions, of dollars of development. It is bizarre, to say the least.
Of course, he is not immune in these regards. Mr Rattenbury, wherever he has gone—he has slithered away, I would imagine, and we know that is not unparliamentary, don’t we?—went to the North Canberra Community Council. He was going to be appearing there. This is from the North Canberra Community Council website: “North Canberra Community Council: The ACT minister for Territory and Municipal services and Greens environment spokesman Mr Rattenbury will discuss controversial changes that have been proposed for the Planning and Land Development Act at the North Canberra Community Council meeting on 16 April.” I would love to have been there. The author of this talks about a couple of articles that were put in the paper. Mr Rattenbury then was defending the government’s fast-track legislation. He was defending it. He said, “It’s okay. This legislation’s okay.”
Why did he say it is okay? Mr Rattenbury said the legislation was better than the existing situation where a minister could use call-in powers to approve a project to speed up that process and put an end to objections. Why? Why is that? Why does Mr Rattenbury think it is better? He accepts the government’s argument that the new planning laws are more democratic and more transparent because they require a project to be put before the Assembly for disallowance.
Mr Rattenbury’s whole argument back then—not that long ago—when he was before the North Canberra Community Council was: “Don’t worry; this is all right because we’ve got this disallowance process.” Once we see this disallowance process in action, what we are seeing is a government and a Greens minister hell-bent on circumventing it and actually changing the rules so they can ram this through.
If you look back further in history—I do love reflecting on the Greens and the Latimer House principles. How they used to love that back then when Mr Rattenbury was the Speaker and Meredith Hunter was in this place. It was great fun. The Greens wrote to Mr Rattenbury. They said back then when they believed in the Latimer House principles, when they believed in not just ramming through legislation, regulations and disallowable instruments at the midnight hour—what did they believe in? Let us see. They said:
The ACT Greens … believe a healthy democracy requires frank, transparent and accountable practices in executive government …
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video