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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (2 September) . . Page.. 1845 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, I simply do not accept that. That reason would certainly have contributed to a reduction in the numbers, but not of the magnitude that we saw. I would argue, and I will continue to argue, that the overwhelming number of people who chose not to go to Tidbinbilla did so because of the imposition of the visitor fee.

In the light of this, it is of concern that already the Government is predicating funding for Tidbinbilla on that visitor fee, yet it is also placing potentially further demands on Environment ACT's budget at Tidbinbilla by requiring it to repay interest and the capital amount of the loan for the development of the Visitor Information Centre. When seeking reassurance from the Government that this would not impact on the budget of Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, we were told, "No, it will not impact". That again is the Government ignoring the worst-case scenario.

We were told that the reduction in visitor numbers would not be significant either, and that in the worst case we could still manage it. We have already seen that the Government has been wrong once on its worst-case analysis of the budget and the impact of visitor fees at Tidbinbilla. How can we be any surer that the same impact will not be far greater than the Government anticipates in relation to the Visitor Information Centre and its impact on the budget of Tidbinbilla? I think the Government's reassurance is fairly weak and that a number of members on this side of the Assembly share the concern that this will eventually impact on the amount of money Environment ACT have to fund the operations and the management of the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, a number of other issues were raised about Environment ACT. The last one I want to allude to - there are a number of other things I need to get to - is the issue of the weed hit teams. The Government has spent an additional $50,000 on operational funding. It is a supplementation to operational funding for the existing weed maintenance and eradication program.

That, to me, does not seem to be meeting the intention of what the Conservation Council was seeking when it made the suggestion to the Government of the need for a weed hit team. I think the Government needs to reconsider exactly how it is focusing that funding to get the best possible result, and certainly the result that the Conservation Council was looking for - it having a greater flexibility on the ground to deal with weed hot spots.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, one of the other issues that I am particularly interested in is the capital works priorities and the proposal to build a public library at Gungahlin. During the last election campaign and twice last year, in March and in November, Mr Cornwell, as a member for Molonglo, put out press releases saying the Government had allocated funding not only for a feasibility project but also for the development of a public library building at Gungahlin, and that that was expected to take place in this year's capital works budget - that is, 1998-99. It is not in this year's capital works budget, and in fact we are told that the feasibility project is only just finishing now.

According to the Government's own advice and in documentation supplied to the Urban Services Committee and an analysis of the capital works budget, the department has made a decision and is making the recommendation in its own documents that Gungahlin's population will warrant a public library in this financial year, 1998-99,

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