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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 (Hansard) 16 May) . . Page.. 1368 ..

Mr Humphries: Mr Speaker, I think I was in the middle of a point of order.

MS McRAE: So was I.

MR SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Humphries: I thought you were making a standing order 46 explanation. Mr Speaker, is Ms McRae making a standing order 46 explanation or a point of order? I am not clear which.

MR SPEAKER: I understand that, having obtained leave from the Chair, you are in the middle of asking a supplementary question, Ms McRae.

MS McRAE: I was about to ask my supplementary question, but I wanted to clarify a point because the Chief Minister misquoted me, Mr Speaker. I will wait until the end if you wish.

MR SPEAKER:. I do. Ask your supplementary question.

MS McRAE: My supplementary question is this: I am afraid, Chief Minister, all your information just verifies the beginning of what I wanted to ask. I will ask it again. Nothing you have said thus far has answered this question. Will you now table the actual information? What you said was that it was clear from the beginning that the Commonwealth was going to negotiate decontaminating the site. Nothing but nothing that we have received verifies that. What I am asking you is: Can you now table the confirmed offer from the Commonwealth, or do you agree that when you talk about Kingston you are really always talking about the contamination on the AGPS site? That is what every bit of documentation we have received thus far verifies.

MRS CARNELL: Mr Speaker, I am happy to answer that question again. The land that the Commonwealth currently owns on the Kingston foreshore is still the Commonwealth's. The reality is that it has not been gazetted across to the ACT. We would not accept a gazetting of the land across to the ACT until we had sorted it out. The Prime Minister says that the implementation of the agreement will all be sorted out at officer level. Gary Prattley said on radio in April last year that we were in the process of setting up a mechanism to work out these issues jointly. As Warwick Smith says, the Commonwealth will meet its responsibilities; there is no doubt about that. Under the self-government Act, Mr Speaker, the land on Kingston foreshore that is still the Commonwealth's is still the responsibility of the Commonwealth. Any contamination that is on that site is their responsibility. I think it is very important to quote again from Mr Prattley, who said:

... the fundamental approach [which was] adopted was for the exchange of "clean sites" and I would therefore expect that any necessary remediation would be carried out or otherwise factored into the exchange so that neither the ACT or the Commonwealth would be disadvantaged.

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