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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1385 ..

McDonald's or Pizza Hut. It was a company consisting of a consortium of owners of the Chisholm shops. The people, we heard, were desperately unhappy about the sale of that site at Chisholm. Let me get this right. This is hard to comprehend. My brain is hurting a bit here.

Mr Whitecross: Not the shop owners, the building owners.

MR HUMPHRIES: The shop owners at Chisholm who did not want this site to be sold have actually bought it. We see here a rather different outcome to the one predicted by Mr Whitecross. Mr Whitecross, in an interjection just a moment ago, seemed to distinguish between building owners and shop operators. We have had some contact from shop operators at the Chisholm centre since yesterday. That is a very strained smile on your face, Mr Whitecross. You are looking a bit strained. Some of those people have expressed rather different views about the sale of that site from the ones that you expressed here yesterday.

It has been suggested to me that Mr Whitecross has been used as a bit of a stalking horse; that, in fact, the views he expressed were the views of only a couple of operators of takeaway shops at the Chisholm shops whose views were not the same as those of the rest of the shop operators at that centre. Indeed, I understand that other operators at the centre, not necessarily all of them, believe there will be a very considerable upturn in their business by the development of that site which was auctioned this morning. In particular, one shop indicated that they believe there would be a 50 per cent improvement in their business if the development of that site went ahead.

I can understand Mr Whitecross's joy and elation at being approached finally by somebody who wanted to give him a petition and make him the member for Tuggeranong for once. Unfortunately, he has been used by somebody in this exercise, because his views certainly are not the views of all the owners of the shops at Chisholm; indeed they are probably not the views of most of them. What would have happened if Mr Whitecross had had his way? Of course, nothing would have happened. We would not be sending a clear signal to business that we are interested in jobs or new business. Mr Whitecross continues to tell Canberrans, "There is a better way". If there is a better way, Mr Whitecross has not found it yet.

MR BERRY: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, do you agree with the comment made by the executive director of the ACT Business Council, Mr Ossie Kleinig, on ABC radio this morning that the Federal budget lacks vision?

MRS CARNELL: I do not think it is up to me to decide whether I agree with Ossie Kleinig or not, but I believe that a budget that is based on getting this economy moving again - a budget that has in it the National Museum, a budget that puts in place the appropriate infrastructure borrowing tax to allow a very fast train to go ahead

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