Page 2816 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 13 September 1994
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It is an indictment of this Labor Government that the problem was allowed to run on for so long before it reached this critical point. I suggest to Mr Wood that, if it had not been for Mr Moore, Ms Szuty and the Liberals becoming concerned about it, we may not have had this inquiry initiated by the Government. We would certainly have had an inquiry; but it would have been initiated by the Opposition and the Independents. There is no question of that. I hope, therefore, that we can come to some sensible agreement and that the inquiry will come down with some very sensible improvements to the present Act. I will be watching it very carefully. Certainly, if there is any attempt at a whitewash, I will be making my own amendments to any such report on the floor of this chamber.
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (4.43): Madam Temporary Deputy Speaker, I rise to make a number of comments in relation to what has been said in the chamber this afternoon. I do so, taking into account the 2½ years I spent as chair of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee, in the company of - - -
Ms Follett: The best chairman it ever had.
MR LAMONT: Thank you; and it has been similarly well conducted by my colleague Mr Berry, who followed me. A hallmark of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee over those 2½ years has been the cooperative way in which issues have been addressed. The PDI Committee started with the concept of achieving a reconciliation of views. Particularly in dealing with the Territory Plan - which was probably the major work undertaken by the PDI Committee in the 2½ years that I was a member of it - we believed that we needed to be the reconcilers, to take the competing views which are evident within our community and attempt to resolve them in a planning context. That was the basis upon which we undertook our work. I believe that the PDI Committee, and subsequently this Assembly, were right in dealing with the Territory Plan in the way they did and in making the decisions they did. I believe that they got it right. I believe that this Assembly - Mr Moore, Ms Szuty, the Opposition and the Government - collectively got it right.
Let me refer to a number of statements on this topic that have been made by members opposite and Mr Moore and Ms Szuty. In 1992, I moved a motion in the Assembly on the question of urban renewal. On that day, Mr Cornwell said:
I would suggest that in the interim, and at the end of three years, certainly in the terms of this topic today - as it will be with all other matters relating to the ACT ... at the end of these three years of your Government, we are going to have much more than just talk.
That is true. I believe that, in our successful completion of the Territory Plan in 1993, we were able to provide a blueprint for the long-term development of this Territory. Ms Szuty said:
I have spoken before on the topic of urban renewal in the context of strategic planning, and I would like to state that, per se, I do not disagree with the concept.
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