Page 4853 - Week 15 - Wednesday, 14 December 2005
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We will also be working closely on examining new trigger projects to assist with instigating development in the City Hill precinct itself. The new advisory forum will investigate these trigger projects, along with the Planning and Land Authority, the Land Development Agency and other relevant government departments. These will allow for continued investment and growth, which is currently occurring in the city centre.
This is one point I really want to make above all others in this debate: walk outside the doors of this Assembly and look around the city. This is not a city that is in stagnation. This is not a city that is failing to attract investment. This is not a city that is failing to renew itself through considerable private sector involvement. Hundreds of millions of dollars of development activity is happening outside the doors of this chamber right now. Count the cranes in the sky, count the new buildings that are being built, look at the new government departments that are choosing to move into our city centre. Just last week, a commonwealth department, currently located in the parliamentary triangle, said it is moving into Civic. It wants to be in the city centre and it has chosen a new office development on Marcus Clarke Street in City West to have as its base. None of those things are indicators of a city centre that is struggling for relevance or struggling for investment.
But there is still more that we can do, and the government’s approach, I think, is vindicated in the considered and very timely advice of the Canberra central task force. Unlike the opposition, I would like to thank those members for their work; unlike the opposition, I would like to recognise the real professionalism that they have brought to their work; and, unlike the opposition, I would like to refute the claim that in some way the Canberra central task force was stacked. I do not know which school of politics Mr Seselja comes from, but, if you really want to stack something, you make sure you have got a majority, Mr Seselja; otherwise there is not much point. The last time I looked at the composition of the Canberra central task force, a majority of those members were not representatives of the ACT government.
How can the ACT government stack a body when it does not even have a majority? It would have been very easy for the ACT government to have a majority, because we determined the membership, but we did not do that. Indeed, we made sure that a majority of the body did not represent the ACT government; they represented private sector interests or they represented agencies outside of the ACT government. That is not stacking, and I think Mr Seselja and those opposite, and others in this city, who have made that assertion cast a real slur on the reputations of those significant private business individuals who are on that task force. Is Mr Seselja saying that Mr Jim Service, Mr Tim Efkarpidis and Mr Ross Barnett are stooges or lackeys of the ACT government? Is he saying that we just told them what to do and they did it? I would challenge you, Mr Seselja, to see if anyone can tell Mr Jim Service what to do or think. He is a smart man, he has got a mind of his own, and he has got integrity and credibility, unlike those opposite. This task force has been considered and detailed in its recommendations.
The new approach the government has outlined will strengthen the government’s planning processes for the future development of the city and City Hill. The government has not lost sight of the significance of this community asset—and that is what it is, a community asset—nor of the legacy that we will be creating for future Canberrans. To establish a place that has meaning, that is relevant and valued, it must be a place that
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