Page 1066 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 May 2020
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Again, my sincere thanks to Dr Lloyd and the broader Assembly team for their efforts in getting us to this point. For the most part, I thank the committee members for all of their efforts in getting us to a point where the vast majority of the report is agreed, something that we have been able to table today as a committee. Again, I thank Mrs Dunne in particular for her efforts and willingness to engage as chair. It is genuinely commendable and I have appreciated it.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11.41), in reply: This is such an important report that I hope the events in the chamber today do not overshadow that. Ms Cheyne has gone to particular lengths to try to draw a distinction between the people who made the decision to start the process and the people who put the process into action. One of the things that have been overlooked is that this is a Westminster parliament. When cabinet makes a decision that a certain thing will happen, cabinet or its agents have a responsibility to ensure that cabinet’s decisions are carried out. Cabinet’s decisions, in this instance, were not carried out. Specific decisions were not carried out. Other specific decisions were effectively countermanded by the bureaucracy. That is a failing in the Westminster system.
There is a multitude of responsibilities in the chain. Cabinet effectively made a decision on three separate occasions that there would not be a land swap for the Dickson and Downer blocks. Three times cabinet made that decision, but some of the officials who made the recommendations to cabinet that there should be a land swap were in charge of the process of negotiating the sale of the Dickson block of land. It is incumbent upon the Westminster system that, if the cabinet makes those decisions, the cabinet essentially has to oversee the process. You cannot just say, “Oh, well, I’ve made the initiating decision and after that it’s not my responsibility.” It is.
Part of the problem I have with Ms Cheyne’s concerns is that they do not reflect the reality of a minister in the ACT in the 21st century. Planning ministers in the ACT in the 21st century—I know because I have worked for one—are regularly briefed on what is going on in the planning system. If they had a sale that was going on for two years, they were being briefed. There is no paper chain to that. I hope that does not create plausible deniability. But it is clear from the way the Westminster system operates that ministers would have been briefed.
The ministers may have been briefed badly, but that is also their responsibility. It may have been said, “Don’t tell them too much,” but that is also their responsibility. It is the responsibility of ministers, the planning minister in this instance, to oversee and ensure that the decision made by the cabinet—which was to sell a block of land through a request for tender with certain conditions on it—did not become derailed and did not become something that cabinet had specifically ruled out. That is the problem with this whole saga—that it became derailed.
It is unclear who derailed it. Many people gave evidence that they were very proud about the land swap because it was going to be a really good deal for the ACT. They threw figures around, but we could not find the paperwork that supported those figures. The land swap was also dependent upon the acquisition of other contiguous land in Downer, which has not been acquired. The land owned by the Tradies in
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