Page 1950 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 25 June 2008
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When we see the Minister for Planning’s attitude to this, I am very worried. Surely he has to agree that the LDA must release blocks that are at least consistent with the territory plan; otherwise, what we are doing is setting people up for failure.
Mr Corbell: It is.
MR SMYTH: Mr Corbell interjects. Perhaps Mr Corbell thought that was the case, but apparently it is not anymore. We reject the Hume planning study, we reject the territory plan and we potentially reject the national capital plan when we do this.
It is very important that these two paragraphs stay in or we have not had a single piece of evidence—apart from the rhetoric. And Mr Corbell is best at rhetoric; the best on the day; you get the award today. At least you are true to your plan that your own party has rejected when they rejected you as planning minister; but best on the day for your speech.
Ms Gallagher’s speech was disinterest, at best. Mr Hargreaves was plain wrong, because he only had to check the website to find my explanatory memorandum. Mr Barr has a different view of the world and chose, for the majority of his speech, to simply—
Mrs Dunne: His was “let’s not mention the war”.
MR SMYTH: Yes, that is right, Mrs Dunne; that is a good summary. “Let us just not mention the war. Let us talk about a different process.” But the process that we have been talking about, that we have been focused on, is site identification and selection, and that is the process that the Chief Minister today is being held to account for. And it is very important that it be held to account. There is the process that this government undertakes in other departments as well, where we have studies that are just being thrown out the window in the zeal that the Chief Minister has shown to ramrod this process through.
Mr Corbell set up processes. Mr Barr set up processes at which taxpayers’ money, good taxpayers’ money, was thrown. And we now hear words like “superseded”. Read “waste”. And that is what this is about; it is about holding the Chief Minister accountable for the things that he does.
It was fantastic to hear the Deputy Chief Minister talk about the real facts. I guess that is as opposed to the unreal facts, which is all we have heard from them today. “Real facts” is a tautology. The facts speak for themselves. They were outlined in a series of documents tabled by Mr Seselja this morning. Turning these documents over and saying, “This is a document, therefore it’s good; and this one is a document, therefore it’s good; and this one’s a document” is not a defence; it is not a rebuttal. It is actually not intellectually honest. You actually have to read the documents to understand what they say. The documents that were tabled detail a litany of failure, and that is why these paragraphs must remain in this motion.
If the minister had bothered to read them, she would see comments like: “Chief Minister has already chosen the site. Write a brief to fit that,” and, “Chief Minister,
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