Page 2848 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 22 November 1989
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Schedule 1 - Part II
Proposed expenditure - ACT Legislative Assembly, $4,430,200 - agreed to.
MR COLLAERY (3.32): I wanted to speak about support to the Legislative Assembly. It is too late?
MR SPEAKER: We can go back to that point, if you seek leave, Mr Collaery.
MR COLLAERY: I seek leave to make some brief remarks about support to the Legislative Assembly.
Leave granted.
MR COLLAERY: We understand that the funds to be appropriated, which the Rally will not oppose, relate partly to the rental or underleasing costs of this building, and we are awaiting a response from the Chief Minister as to whether there are contractual obligations relating to these premises over and above arrangements that may have been reached with the Commonwealth prior to self-government.
I wish to make clear the Rally's view about this building and the expenditure of funds on maintaining the Assembly in this building. I wish to point out that there are a number of deficiencies about this building, well known to all members. The Rally supports at an early stage an examination of proposals for a permanent abode for the Assembly.
Mrs Grassby: We haven't got the money, Bernard. You knocked it off last night.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Speaker, one of the Ministers just said that we have not got the money. I think we can appreciate those issues, but it should be on the record that this dwelling for the Assembly is not appropriate in a number of respects, not the least being that, in the Rally's view, it is not readily accessible to the people, readily marked out as a house of parliament. Were we to have been consulted, were we to have had a view and were we to have had an adequate purse, perhaps we should have moved into Beauchamp House, or, as it is now called, Potter House, if we had had the chance to own that house. It is a freestanding structure that would have properly reflected the nature of the government of the ACT.
I join others in endorsing the great efforts that the ACT Administration put into housing the Assembly, given the stop-start nature of self-government. I think we are all particularly grateful for that, particularly for the type of furniture, which I think was the personal decision of the head of Administration, Mr Harris. I like these old desks. There are a number of good aspects of all the
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