Page 2293 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 August 2017
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It seems the only anti-consorting laws that we have in this town are unwritten laws decreed by Unions ACT. They are the only anti-consorting laws. You have to seek permission, and these are very, very strong anti-consorting laws. I am not sure what the penalties are now for noncompliance but I am sure Simon Corbell can you tell you all about it. If you want to call Simon and ask him, he will tell you. How can you possibly pretend to uphold the standards of open democracy by publicly cutting out a peak body like Clubs ACT which represents 70 per cent of the industry, by cutting them completely from the conversation?
I have had dozens of conversations with residents of Wright, Chapman, Holder and Mawson who believe that they were ignored, who believe that they have effectively been lied to. That is what they believe because of this government’s decision to steal their community facility zone for the purposes of dispersing public housing residents as far away from the light rail corridor as they possibly can. They all know now what happened in December of 2015. They all know about the sneaky underhanded process of making a technical amendment to the territory plan to allow the government to have its way with their suburb.
When the public conversation commenced on this after the sites were announced, we had this absurd situation where initially elected members and officials refused to meet with the public. Meetings were cancelled. Then some were cobbled together with no warning so that stakeholders could not really attend.
Soon after we had the minister come out and inform those communities that the location of the new sites was not up for debate. It was not up for debate. In this open and consultative democracy the communities of Chapman, Wright, Mawson and Holder were told very clearly that by hook or by crook the government would build public housing developments on their community facility zones and there was nothing they could do about it. The only option they had was to try to get the Greens to vote against the government. Good luck with that one. Good luck finding a backbone on the crossbench.
Far be it from me to start rumours in this place but I have to put this on the record. I have had a conversation with some community members who were engaging with the government in Weston Creek. As it was explained to me, exasperated government representatives told a Weston Creek resident in a private meeting that if his residents group continued to oppose this development, the government would simply hand pick some Labor-friendly residents, establish their own residents group and just deal with that new group. I obviously cannot confirm that conversation but surely this government would not be in the business of ignoring a particular interest group and just creating its own. Surely they would not do that. They would not be doing that, would they? There is no way!
As we have watched aghast at how this process has unfolded here in the chamber and out in the suburbs, we, the Canberra Liberals, have gone to great lengths to provide some certainty for all Canberrans in regards to their community facility zones. We have given the government every opportunity to get ahead of the game, to be open and transparent and to reveal to the people of Canberra the location of all of the
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