Page 2613 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, if he doesn’t want an answer, I will sit down. The timbers were sourced from old-growth forests in New South Wales. They are not available anymore. To replace the timbers it would require us to source timbers that are as close to those as we can. It takes two years for that source to be obtained and cured.
Opposition members interjecting—
MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, if they do not want to hear it, I am happy to sit down and they can pursue it through other measures.
MR SPEAKER: Direct your comments through the chair.
Mrs Burke: He’s struggling with the answer.
MR SPEAKER: Members of the opposition will cease interjecting, and that includes you, Mrs Burke.
MR HARGREAVES: There are many considerations regarding the existing bridge, not least of which are environmental considerations. There are flow considerations, there are one-in-100-year flood considerations, there are heritage considerations and heritage view considerations. There is also the matter of the availability of equipment and labour. There is the issue of the stability of the existing bridge and, if it were to be refurbished, whether it could be done in a safe manner. There are many of those sorts of considerations. I mentioned the environmental flow of the river. All of those issues have to be taken into account. So it would be inappropriate for me to take anything to cabinet unless I had as complete a set of documentation around those issues as I can obtain. At this stage, they are almost complete.
Mr Pratt: So after two years, you know nothing.
MR SPEAKER: Order!
Mr Hargreaves: I know a hell of a lot more than you do. All that you do is shoot your mouth off.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mr Hargreaves!
Mr Pratt: Two years and you know nothing.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Pratt, that is the third or fourth time that I have called you to order.
Public transport and traffic management
MR SESELJA: My question is to the Minister for Territory and Municipal Services. Minister, in the Canberra Sunday Times on Sunday, 23 September you said in relation to your recent trip to China that you would be keen to see the results of Beijing’s recent traffic restriction trials. According to the article, you stated:
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