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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 3 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 832 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

to think about it again. But, no; we are going to take it out of this place. We are going to take the debate right out of here. We are going to take the heat right off the Minister and right off the Government and we are going to say, "The Planning Committee will impose itself into this process, and the Planning Committee will take the heat out of the argument, if there is going to be any heat". I just do not see the logic or the rationality of it.

What can the Planning Committee contribute to this debate, except the personal views of its members? The people who are going to come and give evidence to the Planning Committee are the ones who have already put their view forward in this report, and it has been reflected in this report. The Conservation Council of the South-East Region and Canberra will come along and give us the same argument that they gave to the Stein committee. Are we going to change the Stein committee's recommendations because we hear the same evidence again?

I do not know how, as a member of the Planning Committee, Mr Speaker, I can contribute usefully to this debate. I can do it on the floor of the house because I can ask the Minister, "Did you ask the conservationists and everybody else what they think about the ways in which you intend to deviate from the recommendations that you got?", and the Minister is bound to reply; but, as a member of the Planning Committee, I cannot see what I can contribute through that process, except to hear the same old evidence presented by the same people from which we must come to the same conclusion or we find ourselves in conflict with the Minister. What good is that going to do? I just do not understand the logic of it.

I would suggest that the people who have already spoken on the premise that this is going to go to the Planning Committee ought to be clear that the motion is not even before the house yet. Maybe they ought to think twice about whether or not it should go to the Planning Committee. Personally, I do not think it should, because I do not see that we can add anything to the process. I believe that the Minister needs to take the heat out of this and do the negotiating himself, not allow the Planning Committee to cart it away and perhaps inject more heat into the argument at the end of the day than what is in it already. I think a certain amount of logic and sense needs to be applied to this and I do not think that going the route that is proposed here is the right one. I presume that members will carefully consider the matter and come to their own conclusions; but, frankly, I do not see that it is a good thing to do.

MS HORODNY (4.33): Mr Speaker, I seek leave to speak again.

Leave granted.

MS HORODNY: I want to say, first of all, that I am very disappointed with the way Mr Humphries has distributed his response to the Stein report. I asked him at 3.30 pm whether he would be presenting his response today. He referred me to the daily program and said that that is when it would be available. Indeed, that is when it became available, when he started speaking; but I understand that other members had access to the report as early as 12 o'clock.

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