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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2425 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

Not once does it say in this interview, which is the public accounting of this issue, "And I am going to talk to the Assembly and make sure that they fall into line. I cannot wait for the legislation to get into the ACT". That is fine. He does not have to know the detail. Mr Service said:

The Federal Government's changed that in terms of its decisions in relation to Canberra. And what we have to do is we have to, as a community and as a Territory, show the people that there are good opportunities to invest here and this is just another step ...

Mr Service is fully entitled to his opinions. I have no objection at all to them. I have known about his and his dad's opinions for the last 10 years. That is not a problem. I have nothing at all against him. My case is that this Minister, through his actions from the very beginning, had absolutely no intention of worrying about what this Assembly thought about 999-year leases. This whole movement has been to build up a perception with his constituency that he can deliver. He has not sought to correct that perception in any way. That is where he has misled the Assembly, that is where he has misled the people of Canberra and that is where he has not taken his job as Minister seriously.

All I hear from the crossbenches is that once in a while Labor has actually voted with the Liberals. Perhaps the Liberals should have paid a bit of attention to that, because on something as serious as this, if we are ever going to get anything moving in the ACT, perhaps we all ought to be treated as equal players. On something as serious as this, the Minister, until that letter happened to be tabled in December, has gone out of his way to keep this issue secret. We have not seen draft legislation. We have not been given copies of the Bill. We have not seen any clarification of what the Commonwealth is doing. We have to take his word, and his word changes. We have to take it from quotes like that of his remarks to the Property Council, in respect of which there was not a press release saying, "Alex Sloan quoted me wrongly on her program. I was wrong with the Property Council. I am terribly sorry. I was very interested to hear James Service's support of me, but James Service was wrong. I am waiting on my Assembly colleagues' response to this. I will be tabling legislation in the Assembly". We did not see any of that detail.

You can say whatever you like about the wording of my motion, but the clear reason why I and my party have lost confidence in this Minister is that his mismanagement of the extension of this process of getting the Commonwealth Government in line to take leases to 999 years has been duplicitous. We have been misled. We have not been taken into consideration, and we have no faith at all in him.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

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