Page 1922 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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Let us look at the letter. Mr Stanhope says this is the government’s get out of jail free letter. It is not. It does not disprove anything that the opposition has been saying. It says that there are three sites. It lists the three sites. It says quite categorically that, as of 19 July last year, ActewAGL’s preferred site was still block 7 of section 21. It does not disprove anything. Mr Stanhope talks about a meeting that happened on 6 July, but we know from the documents tabled by Mr Seselja that on 8 July officials of ActewAGL were still writing to the LDA saying, “Please intercede with the Chief Minister to get block 7 of 21, Hume. back on track because this is the one that we want to use.”
It does not disprove anything. All it does is say that these are the sites that have been considered. It does not make a commitment from the Chief Minister to provide any one of those sites. There is nothing in this that could prove otherwise. Jon Stanhope’s get out of jail ticket is so flimsy that he would not provide it until the 11th hour. When he was given the opportunity to table it this morning, he would not table it. He was eventually forced to get a girl to come and do his job for him. He will not table most of the other advice that goes with it.
What we have seen today and throughout is a Chief Minister who, when it is convenient, will use the term “process”. But when he does not want to release documents he says, “There is an FOI process involved.” He has actually given very clear direction to his FOI officers that they should be as stringent as possible in the releasing of information.
As a member for Ginninderra I cannot let the opportunity go by without referring to what is in the pipeline for the people of Belconnen. What is in store for your constituents and my constituents and Mr Stanhope’s constituents in relation to a proposed data centre within 200 metres of the new housing development of Macgregor and slap-bang in the middle of what the new territory plan tells us is a future urban area?
Predictably, when the opposition raised this as a possibility, it was only raised on the basis of “it seems that this is what people are thinking”. The Chief Minister came out swinging in his usual attempt to mislead over the issue. He claimed that we should not be upset because it was a block next to an egg farm. In fact, the egg farm is considerably further from the block than is the affordable housing land that the Chief Minister has touted. It is simply not true that it is close to the egg farm.
The Chief Minister said that there were no plans—there had never been any plans—for a gas-fired power plant. He said at estimates, “There is no evidence, not a skerrick.” He said this because back in October last year ActewAGL lodged with the LDA an application for a block of land and said that they would use mains electricity to power the data centre.
But let us look at what happened before October 2007 and see what the truth really is. There is a substantial amount of documentary evidence that shows that there had been at least preliminary plans for a gas-fired power station at Belconnen. The LDA believed that the government facility required a gas supply. As Mr Smyth said this morning, they explicitly said this when they asked for a valuation. The ActewAGL
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