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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 1973 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

At no stage was I directed to take a particular line on any matter or the topic as a whole. Accordingly the final report, as delivered to you, represents the consultant team's work under my leadership and I am happy to have our name on the report.

You will note that I have written this on the letterhead of the Research Planning Design Group, the new business name is the successor to TBA Planners.

The letter is signed by Trevor Budge.

Mr Corbell will do anything to thwart this because they do not want the Government getting on with business. We have just lost a whole week of the Assembly's business because they want to stop us from getting on with our business.

Mr Speaker, I understand that Mr Corbell has the numbers on this. I would ask the crossbenchers to reconsider and to stick to their motion of 28 May last year. We believe that this will become a very exciting part of a dynamic city that grows and changes. Mr Corbell has indicated that they are against change. They are against a growing and dynamic city. He said, "You can't do this because it's against the Territory Plan". I wonder what number of Territory Plan variations we are currently up to, Mr Speaker. We vary the plan all the time. The National Capital Plan is varied all the time to meet the needs of the people of this city and to meet the needs of this city as the national capital.

Mr Moore: We are up to 118.

MR SMYTH: We are up to 118 variations. Mr Corbell and the Labor Party, the true conservatives in this place, would like to see everything set in stone, nothing ever to change. Let us live the same old lives we have always lived because they cannot come up with any policy, they cannot come up with any initiatives; all they can come up with is opposition. That is all they stand for. They stand for nothing. Mr Speaker, the Government will oppose this motion.

MS TUCKER (11.34): I fully support this motion. I believe that the Government's promotion of rural residential development in the ACT has been a shambles from the start. It is really quite amazing how brazen Mr Smyth will be on this matter. He should actually be very ashamed.

First we had the botched attempt by the Government to do an exclusive deal with a developer over the development of rural residential land at Kinlyside, which goes right against the Government's principle that land releases should be done through an open and transparent sales process that gives all interested parties a chance to bid for the land. Then the Government released the so-called independent report into rural residential development which was exposed as being heavily adopted by the Government to support its own position. It can hardly be called a comprehensive and objective review of the issue. Even so, the report highlighted a number of environmental, planning and economic problems with rural residential land that called into question its appropriateness in the ACT.

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