Page 1889 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
moving a motion today against someone so wholly unconnected with the legislation or its operations.
To address the other elements of this particular plank of the Leader of the Opposition’s fast-sinking raft of accusations, I make no apology whatsoever for authorising the release to the media of materials—I believe five folios—that has helped to set the record straight and disprove the fictions being peddled as fact by the Leader of the Opposition. The Leader of the Opposition has been assiduously misleading the local media, making outrageous and unsubstantiated accusations against me to the effect that I strongarmed the consortium into accepting a block of land against its better judgement. Of course I provided the Canberra Times with information that categorically disproved this dreadful slander.
Is it seriously suggested that I should not have done so and that I ought to have allowed the slander to run? The remarkable aspect of this affair is not that I quite properly set the record straight but that the Leader of the Opposition, even after his party was in full possession of the facts, assisted in peddling misinformation and fiction. Where is the acknowledgement by the Leader of the Opposition that he was 100 per cent wrong? Where is his retraction of the allegations he made against me that were made in relation to the gas-fired power station proposed at Belconnen—that complete fiction, that fantasy and imagining of his? Astonishingly, what we have, instead of an abject apology, is a no-confidence motion in me for daring to set the records straight, plus a repetition of the slander. Strange days indeed, Mr Speaker.
The final matter raised by the Leader of the Opposition is that I failed to properly consider the impact of a data centre and gas-fired power station on local residents and I failed to adequately notify and consult with residents. Again, what is on display today is the Leader of the Opposition’s ignorance of how the planning system actually works. Is the Leader of the Opposition seriously suggesting that every time a private development proposal is put up, it should be the responsibility of a minister to consult with residents in relation to that proposal? On what basis? Under what area of portfolio responsibility? To what end?
Under our statutory processes, it is not for the government to sell a private sector proposal to the community or to consult on it—that is a job for the proponents. The government’s role and the role of its agencies in relation to proposals of this sort is clear, and it has been designed precisely and explicitly to remove ministers and the executive from the responsibility of approving projects. I may champion a particular proposal in a general sense. Indeed, I champion the current proposal, in that general sense, openly and proudly. I champion a project that would have a carbon footprint 56 per cent less than a similar development that relied on the electricity grid. I champion a project that will create hundreds of jobs and boost our reputation as a centre for high-tech services, a project that would help diversify our economy and insulate us against the shocks that come to any town that depends to such an extent on one major employer. But this support is essentially irrelevant. (Further extension of time granted.)
Neither I nor my ministers ought to be charged with planning approval in relation to this or any other project. I have nothing to say about the suitability of this site or any site or the level of emissions it may generate or the visual impact on the landscape,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .