Page 1821 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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by this government when it came to the future of Phillip oval. ACTAFL indicated they no longer wished to hold a concessional lease for Phillip oval and they approached me, as minister, to seek agreement to sell it. They were proposing to sell it to a developer. That would have resulted in the loss of that oval to the community, with a loss of the provision of that space to the community, and the government refused. I refused to give consent to its transfer to a third party. That meant ACTAFL had to think again of their options and they ultimately chose to surrender their lease to the territory.
Mr Speaker, that is the sort of safeguard that consent to transfer provides. Even though that lease was granted 30 or 40 years ago, the public interest was protected. The short-term provisions put into the lease by Mr Smyth gave no protection at all after a five-year period. That is the real failure of the previous government that this government is now seeking to address.
I think that the approach that has been adopted by the Chief Minister is the appropriate one in this regard. He has indicated very strongly the view of the government that the interests of residents and their long-term security must be protected. There are no easy choices for the government in regard to this issue. At some point we will be picking up the tab, whether it is in regard to land or whether it is in regard to compensation. The taxpayer will again be asked to pick up the tab. Perhaps it is a bill that should more rightly be sent to Mr Smyth, the minister who created the situation in the first place. But the territory accepts that it has responsibilities and the territory will be moving to ensure that the interests of the long-stay residents at Narrabundah are protected to the greatest extent possible. I support the motion and the amendment moved by Mr Stanhope.
Mr Stanhope’s amendment agreed to.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (11.53): I seek leave to speak again and to move the amendment circulated in my name.
Leave granted.
MR STEFANIAK: I move:
Omit all words after “this Assembly”, substitute: “calls on the ACT Government to vigorously pursue a suitable solution in relation to the future of residents at the Narrabundah Longstay Caravan Park; and, in particular, pursue the option of a land swap with the current owner.”.
This is a simple amendment. It cuts out a lot of the verbiage in Dr Foskey’s motion, some of which may be relevant and some of which I think is completely irrelevant. I have already spoken about some of the problems in paragraph 4 (a), but that has now been voted on.
My amendment calls on the ACT government to vigorously pursue a suitable solution in relation to future of residents at the Narrabundah long-stay caravan park, and in particular, to pursue the option of a land swap with the current owner. I should perhaps point out to Mr Corbell that this debate went on for about eight months in 2000. There was certainly a debate in the Assembly about not selling it. Then the arrangement with
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