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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2033 ..

Ms MacDonald: My apologies, Mr Speaker.

MRS CROSS: Mr Speaker, the report clearly states the following:

The Minister for Planning stated that negotiations were still under way and that he was hopeful—

this is on the purchase of the lease of Phillip oval—

that a conclusion would soon be reached. ACTAFL originally approached the Government and informed them that they no longer required the oval and wished to sell the oval ...

This is from Hansard, Mr Speaker:

ACTAFL initially sought my consent, which is required under their lease, to sell the oval to a third party who wished to redevelop the site. That party also approached the government seeking agreement to change the territory plan to permit certain other activities on the oval.

I indicated on behalf of the government that the government would not support a redevelopment of the oval for the purposes that were proposed and I also indicated that I would not support transfer of the lease, because I thought it was inappropriate to sell the lease to a party who wasn’t proposing to use the oval predominantly for sporting-type activities.

The interesting thing with that was that we asked the minister about this issue, and the minister referred to a party. He didn’t refer to parties and he didn’t offer this information to us; we had to actually write to him to get any correspondence about a party. All the minister said to this committee was it was a party, which, we felt, on reflection—

Mr Quinlan: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: let me say I can understand Ms MacDonald’s point of order. Mrs Cross is debating the report. This debate is about the appropriation bill. Do we or don’t we get the funding? That is the question. I would request, Mr Speaker, that Mrs Cross be requested to address the bill at hand.

MRS CROSS: This is relating to the bill, it’s pertinent.

Mr Smyth: On the point of order, Mr Speaker: it’s normal when we have appropriation bills that we often discuss the government’s response when we discuss the bill itself. The government’s response was tabled less than an hour ago, and Mrs Cross is clearly addressing issues that have come to life as a result of the Estimates Committee and the government’s response to the Estimates Committee on the third appropriation bill. And it has always been so. Therefore, it’s entirely appropriate to discuss these issues in this debate.

MR SPEAKER: Nevertheless, members speaking to a bill have got to remain relevant. To the extent that discussion of the committee report is relevant to matters in the bill, it’s open to members to deal with it in that context.

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