Page 1254 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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mendacious. The allegation that I had agreed to allocate to a particular developer a casino licence is mendacious. All those allegations are mendacious. I defend their description as such.
I now turn to the facts of this matter. The allegation is that the Tuggeranong Community Council was promised a briefing on a proposed variation to the city plan in relation to the Eastern Parkway. It is alleged that that briefing did not take place because of some intervention by my office.
That was the allegation made during question time when Mr Jensen asked a question of the Chief Minister, to which I responded because - to take the words out of this motion that we have got here today - it constituted an unwarranted personal attack upon me because it was false.
It implied, Mr Speaker, that some political intervention on my part had been applied to prevent the Tuggeranong Community Council from receiving a briefing. That was clearly false.
If we look at the motion, the first part is that saying that an allegation was false constituted an unwarranted personal attack on the other member - on this occasion, Mr Jensen. I would reject that proposal outright. I state again that his allegation was that my office had in some way intervened to prevent the Tuggeranong Community Council receiving a briefing from the Interim Territory Planning Authority in relation to the Eastern Parkway. I state categorically that that allegation was false. The facts are that there was an undertaking to brief the council. That briefing did not take place because of the circumstances outlined by the Chief Minister at the end of question time today.
As I said yesterday, Mr Speaker, the chairman of the council had been briefed separately on a range of Tuggeranong development issues on 4 August by an officer of my department at a separate meeting instigated by that officer, and I have a record of the meeting prepared by an officer of the department. This was signed by Hans Sommer, who is the assistant secretary, land development. That document is headed "Briefing of 4 August 1989 of Chairman of Tuggeranong Community Council". I will quote from the document:
I initiated contact with Mr David Read in July to seek discussion with the Tuggeranong Community Council on a range of issues including the retail situation in the general Calwell area...also the Gilmore Highway Service Centre and any other issues that the Council were interested in discussing.
The aim was to ensure that in formulating our sales and marketing program we had appropriate
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