Page 2420 - Week 09 - Thursday, 17 September 1992
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Academic Bodies - Assembly Appointments
MR CORNWELL: My question is to the Chief Minister and comes hard on the heels of the appointment, finally, of a Secretary of the Department of Education. I refer to the continuing embarrassing delay - now over 12 months, I might add, due to factional wrangling in the ALP, I understand - in the appointment of Assembly nominees to the University of Canberra, among other academic bodies. I ask: Has the matter finally been resolved so that Ms Ellis is to be appointed to the University of Canberra Council, Mrs Grassby to the Institute of the Arts, and Mr Lamont - heaven help us - to the ANU? Secondly, when will you be asking the Liberal Party to nominate its representatives to these bodies?
MS FOLLETT: If Mr Cornwell's fanciful proposal put forward there represents factional wrangling, it is news to me. It looks like a very amicable outcome to me, I must say. I do regret the delay in getting on with appointments to the University of Canberra Council, and I take full responsibility for that. It is a matter that is within my responsibility and I have not made a decision on the matter. Indeed, I have not considered that matter. The proposition Mr Cornwell puts forward has not been considered by me. It has not been put to me other than by Mr Cornwell. If it is his favoured outcome, he might care to say so.
Mulligan's Flat Nature Park
MS SZUTY: My question is to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning. In July this year the Minister reaffirmed an announcement made in December 1991 that Mulligan's Flat in Gungahlin would be protected as a nature park. As yet, no announcement has been made regarding the definite boundaries of that park. Can the Minister inform the Assembly when the boundaries will be finalised, to what extent they will be based on the submission of the Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra, and when an announcement will be made?
MR WOOD: Early on in my life as Minister for the Environment I announced that we would gazette Mulligan's Flat as a nature park. That was well received at the time, and I indicated to bodies in the town, particularly the Conservation Council, that I would take advice from them on the boundaries for that park. Subsequently, the Conservation Council came back with a very thorough, well-considered document defining what it thought the boundaries were. At the launch of that document I indicated that we would take a very generous view of what those boundaries should be. As to when that will finally be determined as my officers work through it, it will be sooner rather than later. I would think some time in October.
Let me indicate to the Assembly as a whole that the announcement - and we will finalise it shortly - demonstrates our interest in the environment. It is not a matter that can be taken lightly. If you put a capital cost on that land, which had previously been proposed for residential development as part of Gungahlin, it runs into many millions of dollars. We are prepared to forgo that income in the interests of developing an important addition to the Canberra Nature Park.
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