Page 2542 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 June 2005
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executive in a discussion with him in my office, and I took those views into account in making the direction.
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations—relocation
MRS BURKE: My question is to the Minister for Planning. Minister, on what grounds and on what information did you base your scare tactic comments in May on ABC radio that the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, DEWR, were relocating in toto their staff from Civic to the airport, whereas the fact is that this is not the case?
MR CORBELL: The department is significantly relocating to the airport; there are no doubts about that. That is the point I was making.
MRS BURKE: Minister, how did you fail to thoroughly investigate the situation that was subsequently published highlighting that DEWR needed approximately 10,000 square metres of additional space as there were no other options in Civic and that there will not be one less DEWR employee working in Civic? Why do you continually and persistently wilfully mislead the Assembly on this issue?
Mr CORBELL: Mr Speaker, I ask that that be withdrawn. You can only suggest that I have misled the Assembly through a substantive motion and Mrs Burke should withdraw the statement.
MR SPEAKER: Withdraw that, Mrs Burke.
Mrs Burke: It was said. I withdraw, Mr Speaker.
MR CORBELL: Mr Speaker, I did not.
ACTION bus service
MR PRATT: Mr Speaker, my question is to the minister for transport. Minister, why won’t you provide adequate, regular ACTION bus services to the Canberra airport? How is this failure to provide such a service going to encourage tourism and business relationships between air travellers, airport workers and the rest of the ACT?
MR CORBELL: It has been a longstanding policy of this and previous governments—indeed when my predecessor, Mr Smyth, was minister he had a similar approach—that a bus service to the airport could not be justified based on patronage levels. Given that there has been an increase in employment activity at the airport, I have previously asked ACTION and the Department of Urban Services to assess whether a bus service is now justified to that area. Patronage levels would not, in our view, be significantly increased despite the increased level of employment in that location. In particular, there is an abundance of either free or low-cost car parking. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to justify, at this stage, an ACTION service to the airport.
Business confidence
MS PORTER: Can the Minister for Economic Development and business outline some of the key findings from the recently released Hudson employment expectations survey
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