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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3144 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

these units will be used for tourism as serviced apartments and the rest used for residential accommodation? There was a question there of how many residential units there were to be in the whole North Watson development, and the residential units as part of this development were part of that total. We were told, "Everything is right; no problem". Now we are told that there is a problem; you cannot differentiate between the two.

I think it is a matter that requires further attention. It is not good enough to let this thing just drift along in the hope that it will sort itself out. It will not. I ask the Minister to take that particular matter of definition under review, to make sure that we do not get another camel that everybody thought was going to be a horse. Until we can have some surety about that, you can understand why people in the community say that the thing is out of control, planning is not controlled, it is certainly not controlled in the interests of the community. We need to dispel that illusion as quickly as possible.

MR MOORE: Mr Speaker, I seek leave to make a statement on a matter involving the report of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment on contaminated sites.

Leave granted.

MR MOORE: I make this statement on behalf of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment to express the committee's concern about a matter raised in the committee's report, The Adequacy of Processes Relating to Identifying and Managing Contaminated Sites in the ACT. Members will recall that the report was tabled in June this year and made 15 recommendations for the improved identification and management of contaminated sites in the ACT. Recommendation 9 of the report called on the Government to announce urgently its remediation plans for contaminated land, identifying the mechanisms and the timetable for remediation, as well as how contaminated land is to be transported and stored. In the case of the contaminated land at Theodore and Watson, the committee considered that the Government's remediation plan should be announced during August 1996. The last sentence is the reason for this statement.

The Government has not yet announced its remediation plans for Theodore and Watson, which means that residents of these areas are left wondering what the Government's intentions are. Some residents are left in the limbo-land of not being able to sell their properties at all. They may not even be able to rent them until the Government makes up its mind, in that prospective tenants are worried about the extent of contamination and the lack of knowledge about the way the Government intends to deal with it. This is causing considerable anguish to some residents, and the Minister is aware of a number of cases, one of which I must say he has dealt with extremely positively.

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