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Mr Osborne: And big and strong.

MR BERRY: This is what happens to you if you stay here for too long. You end up with shoulders like a coke bottle. To quote that Garran resident again, why did they stand? I think the issue of corporatisation and privatisation is going to emerge again and again. It has been talked about today in relation to ACTION. Before this house rises at the end of the week it will be mentioned again, I am sure, in relation to ACTEW, and it will be the subject of much concern. The Government has to make out a case in relation to all of those instrumentalities that it is better for the community, that it is not just an ideological attitude that they have and they want to have matched in their management of Territory assets and that it is not just something that they promised to do for no good reason.

No case has been made out in relation to Namadgi National Park, and I am convinced that no case can be made out, because this is not an instrumentality which provides particular services to the community. With their ideological economic rationalist approach, the Liberals opposite will be able to play with the numbers in relation to those other instrumentalities throughout the Territory and present a case. It will be almost impossible for them to justify a claim that they will be able to do something better - - -

Mr Humphries: You have not even listened to it yet.

MR BERRY: We have been through this over and over again. There is the promise of economic rationalism every time the Liberals appear on the horizon; but when it comes to national parks forget it, because it is not on. It is not on in relation to Namadgi, because this is an asset that the people of the ACT, I am absolutely certain, want their elected representatives to shoulder responsibility for with pride.

MR HUMPHRIES (Attorney-General and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (4.00): Mr Speaker, dear, oh dear! I really think that we fail to do the people of this Territory justice in meeting the responsibilities that fall on our shoulders when we advance arguments of such a weak and unsubstantiated nature in dealing with a debate as important as this. What Mr Berry is doing in none too subtle fashion is confusing two quite different issues. He is confusing the notion of contracting out a functional role of the operation of Namadgi National Park with the idea of giving it away or selling it. Mr Speaker, those two ideas are utterly different and are arguably utterly incompatible. The former is certainly an issue to which this Government is prepared to address its mind. The latter would never be an issue to which the Government was prepared to address its mind. It is quite dishonest, to be frank, to try to confuse those two issues and pretend that by talking about contracting out aspects of the management of Namadgi National Park we are thereby going to hand over the park to somebody else.


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