Page 3313 - Week 11 - Thursday, 22 September 1994

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Petrol Station Sites

MR HUMPHRIES: Madam Speaker, my question is also to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning. I refer the Minister to a statement - - -

Mr Connolly: The best Planning Minister.

MR HUMPHRIES: The best Planning Minister. You have all given yourselves those tags. I did not realise that this Government had such a self-bestowed tag of excellence on it. I refer the Minister to a statement made by that other excellent Minister, Mr Connolly, in this Assembly on 13 April 1994 with reference to petrol pricing in the ACT, in which he said:

We made it very clear that additional sites - and the Government's position paper that was tabled in this Assembly said that there would be up to six - will be made available on an open bidding process ...

Without denigrating that process, when will the new, so-called independent petrol sites be put out to tender? Can you tell the Assembly of the timeframe for the calling of the tenders?

MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, Mr Connolly did make that statement and, in the period since then, my department - the one responsible for leasing matters - has been attending to it and drawing up the necessary documents. As a courtesy to one of our committees which was looking into this matter - - -

Mrs Carnell: He said, the day after, "Garbage; throw it out the window".

MR WOOD: Hang on! As a courtesy to one of the committees of this Assembly, we did not act and we did not advertise the tender documents until the committee had reported. Now that the committee has reported - - -

Mr Moore: Very appropriate.

MR WOOD: Yes, indeed, very appropriate. The material was ready and we were in a position to move forward in the interests of reducing the price of petrol in this Territory, but to conform with the procedures of this Assembly we had not done so. You can expect that there will be a response to the committee's report very soon, and, if that response indicates that we will proceed with the release of those sites, then that will follow very quickly.


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