Page 629 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 1990
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
June there will be an announcement of early budget measures is therefore wrong?
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I have constantly stated, and I reaffirm, there is no mini-budget. Listen carefully: there is no mini-budget. The Government is developing its budget for the year 1990-91 and that is the only budget that the Government has in mind. Later this month I will be making a statement that will set the budget strategy. That is not a mini-budget; it will talk about budgetary strategies. There is no mini-budget, no budget other than the yearly budget for 1990-91 in the Government's mind. I do not know the minute to which the Leader of the Opposition refers. If there is any statement in that which implies there is a mini-budget, it is wrong.
Gowrie Hostel
MR STEFANIAK: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, is it true that the Commonwealth is selling Gowrie Hostel for private use? If so, what is the Government's reaction to that sale?
MR KAINE: Mr Speaker, I have been informed that the Commonwealth is intending to sell Gowrie Hostel under a 25-year crown lease agreement for commercial accommodation. I understand that that is the purpose, with rights to extension for a further 25-year term if the Commonwealth still has no use for the site.
Members may well question why that site was gazetted as national land in the first instance under section 27(1) of the ACT (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988, when within months the Commonwealth has decided that they have no use for the site. I would remind Assembly members that section 27(2) of the Act says:
The Minister shall not declare an area to be National Land unless the land is, or is intended to be, used by ... the Commonwealth.
I think it is quite clear that in this case that intention was not there. On 19 December 1989, soon after the Alliance Government took office, I wrote to the Commonwealth Minister, Mr West, setting out the Territory's claims to the property. On 19 February 1990, Mr West dismissed the Territory's claims in what I regard as a somewhat cavalier fashion. That unsatisfactory response was made even less courteous by the fact that officers of Mr West's department had already given the press details of this curt dismissal of my submission before I received the response.
Perhaps I could table a copy of the Minister's response for the information of all concerned. I present the following paper:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .