Page 1291 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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Canberra community $3.5m per year to have them in Civic rather than to have them in Tuggeranong. That is the difference between having them in Civic and having them in Tuggeranong.
It is going to cost us $3.5m per year. The figures are set out. The consultant has reported. They have been extrapolated from that. That is what it is going to cost us. In the examples that Mr Whalan gave us of further developments waiting in Garema Place, if they are not office blocks I will think, "Terrific; let them go, let us see what sorts of developments we can get".
Mr Whalan: We could have 10 international schools there.
MR MOORE: If they are office blocks then let us consider the ramifications of that. Let us say they are office blocks, and let us say they are the same size as the Canberra Times site, because we have not been able to see these things. In spite of this open government, access to some of these things is not always as easy as it should be. In fact, when we search, we often find that we are charged great sums of money for information that should be free.
So let us assume that it is equal in size to the Canberra Times site - 800 workers per site, let us say for ease of argument, or 3,000 extra office workers put in Civic instead of being put in Tuggeranong. Then we are talking about three times $3.5m - over $10m extra per year that the people of the ACT are going to be paying because the wrong thing is built there. It is not because there is no building, but because the wrong thing is built there. And that is exactly what this debate is about. It is not about whether a development should go on the Canberra Times site. Of course the Canberra Times site is getting derelict. Of course it should be developed. But it ought not be developed as an office block, and that is what the debate is about.
For Mr Whalan to continue to mislead and suggest we are anti-development because we wish to restrict a specific type of development and keep in line with the decentralised plan concept indicates that he is not prepared to argue and to debate in a normal and rational way the facts that can be available. Let him bring the facts up, let him debate this, and then let him take the appropriate action - as I say, I support the motion by Mr Kaine - to resolve this impasse as quickly as possible. That is quite an appropriate way.
But let that impasse not be resolved by undercutting the Supreme Court decision that protects the environment in which we live, because this is a question about environment and about costs in Canberra, not a question about constructions workers' jobs. They will be there just the same whether the development is development for a hotel or serviced apartments or one of the other possibilities that Mr Geoff Campbell, your own interim territory planner,
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