Dear Brendan,

I wish to assure you that I am disappointed that members of the opposition have chosen to take out of context remarks made by you at the April meeting of the Gungahlin Community Council in response to my question-

concerning the need for Gungahlin residents to write letters to the Standing Committee on Planning and Urban Services in order to make our views known about the need for the extension of Gungahlin Drive ...

As you and I both know you were the invited guest at the above meeting and the subject of roads was chosen prior to the meeting on our initiative-

not yours, so those who are accusing you of manipulating or blackmailing the community are doing so under false pretences. It is true that the Community Council Executive did "not tell people which route to choose" but encouraged them to write their own letters. David Gower did write a sample letter which folks could copy if they chose and some folks may have done this. I also wrote a letter which was available to people as an example of the kind of clarity which I believed would be helpful.

Please note that several members of the executive of the Community Council attended the Maunsell workshops in 1996 and at those workshops we made it clear that we preferred option 3-

we made it clear that we preferred option three...which had links to Barry Drive and to Caswell Drive, now known as the eastern route - the government's preferred route. This pre-dates the present discussion by 4 years.

In response to the question "Do we feel any pressure to lobby for a transport corridor and a particular route?" the answer is yes! That pressure is coming from the very vocal and in our view, unbalanced lobby being put forward by the Save the Ridge group. It was because of the concerted effort by this group that we became worried that implementation of a suitable transport corridor for Gungahlin/North Canberra would be hijacked. We had already seen evidence of this at the Maunsell Workshops which is why we invited you to attend our meeting and why we asked assistance on how to run a campaign.