Page 4720 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 7 December 1994
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Mr Kaine: There is enough committee work to keep them going for the next three years.
MR CORNWELL: Indeed. I look forward to Mr Kaine's committee investigating the very important reference of review of betterment.
Mr Connolly: We look forward to Mr Kaine, as an Opposition member, still chairing committees.
MR CORNWELL: Hopefully, Mr Connolly, Mr Kaine, as Treasurer in a Liberal government, will be directing somebody like you to undertake it. In regard to committee references, we will have to wait until the new Assembly, but I would hope that the other recommendations are not going to be ignored in the interim by the Government. They are far too important to ignore.
Madam Speaker, let me say in conclusion that I do not believe that we have covered all of the problems of planning here in the ACT. I think that would be asking too much. We have, however, identified a great many. Action taken upon them arising from this unanimous report - I stress that; all five members of the committee support it - will go a long way to improving the situation as it applies. I hope that we will not have to have other inquiries, but no doubt we will have to improve the planning process from here on in. This report does go a long way to assisting it.
I, too, would like to thank the secretary, Mr Rod Power, and the secretariat for the work done. There are 85 closely printed pages here. The job of pulling all this together was of considerable magnitude. It is something which is often forgotten. The recommendations are in chapter 6, but there are more than six chapters obviously, and there has to be something in them. That is the work of Rod Power and the secretariat. They provide the necessary background so that people can read and understand our reports. So I, too, would like to compliment Mr Power. This Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee, my colleague Mr De Domenico reminds me, has met 113 times in the last - - -
Mr De Domenico: It has met 116 times.
MR CORNWELL: I stand corrected. It has met 116 times in the last 2½ years. That is no idle figure. I believe that it is a pity that there are not more members of the public, residents of the ACT, in the gallery to hear that statistic which indicates that Assembly members do not sit up in their offices with their feet on the desk doing nothing when this house is not in session. I join the chairman of the committee in commending this report to the house.
MS SZUTY (4.39): Madam Speaker, this report is a unanimous report from the members of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee to this Assembly. I think it is a significant achievement that a committee representative of three or even more political viewpoints can reach such a degree of consensus about a number of important matters in relation to planning in the ACT. Madam Speaker, there are a number of issues contained in the report which I could have elaborated on further in terms of additional comments. I chose not to do so but to speak in this Assembly today about those issues, and I will turn to those shortly.
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