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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1314 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

The workers in that enterprise got together and said, "We do not want our mates to lose their jobs. We will do something else". In fact, I understand that they even took a pay reduction so that their mates would keep their jobs, and within about 18 months to two years the firm had got out of its difficulties and was trading exceptionally well and everyone got a very nice big pay rise. A lot of flexibility and a lot of basic commonsense were shown in the workplace. It shows what can be done if people are prepared to work cooperatively. Mr Speaker, the Opposition have shown how totally inflexible they are. As my colleague Mr Humphries says, they have not moved out of the 1950s, unlike their colleagues in many other States.

MS FOLLETT (4.40): I have a very brief comment. I heard a couple of Government members speaking in the fairly disparaging terms of former Senator Graham Richardson. I want to make two comments to set the record straight. The first of those is that I have never yet seen Graham Richardson, as a senator or as anything else, in attendance at a Left meeting of any description. I am equally confident that Graham Richardson would speak in heroic terms of anyone who was paying him enough, probably including Castro.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

MR MOORE (4.40): Mr Speaker, I present Report No. 11 of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment entitled "Interim Report on the Acton/Kingston Land Swap", together with extracts of the minutes of proceedings. I move:

That the report be noted.

Pursuant to the resolution of the Assembly of 24 August 1995, the report was circulated when the Assembly was not sitting, on 7 May 1996.

I would like to begin my speech today by thanking the other members of the committee. It is always difficult, when we have a four-member committee that is in one sense a microcosm of the Assembly, to prepare a report, because any two members moving dissent from the chair's draft can negative that draft. It is, therefore, sometimes an interesting process to get committee reports; but I must say that, through the whole time the committee has operated, I believe, there has been goodwill on the part of all members to ensure that we do have positive results and deal with issues as quickly as possible. I would also particularly like to thank the secretary. That sort of circumstance makes his job that much more difficult. Rod Power is always efficient and willing to listen to members and to work with me, and I believe that it is appropriate to acknowledge that.

We nominated this as an interim report because we believed that it was appropriate for us to continue to monitor what goes on in relation to the Acton-Kingston land swap. It is not an interim report in the sense that the Government ought not proceed and do things because they are waiting for a final report. I wanted to make it very clear,

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