Page 2184 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008

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Mr Corbell: Your whip has no idea what she is doing.

MR SESELJA: There was a pair, and Ms MacDonald did not deny that when she got up to speak. There was a pair which was reneged upon.

Mr Corbell: The problem is that your whip has no idea what she’s doing.

MR SPEAKER: Order, please!

MR SESELJA: Let us just put in context what happened. There was a pair and the government needed nine votes to get it up, so they reneged on the pair. If we turn that around, there will be many cases when we have granted a pair and we might want to—

Members interjecting—

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR SESELJA: So Ms MacDonald, through a brilliant piece of strategy, has thrown the arrangements for pairs into disarray. We can no longer trust the government in relation to its granting of pairs and that will now mean that we will have to take a very serious look at all pairs and all bets are off in terms of which will be granted.

Ms MacDonald: You haven’t had an arrangement for months.

MR SESELJA: We have stood by it when we have granted a pair. The government have changed the game now and it is quite a stupid strategic move on their part. I just put it on the record that that is what happened. Ms MacDonald has not denied that that happened. For her own benefit, the short-term benefit of winning one vote, she went back on an agreement—and we treat that matter very seriously and we will be considering our options now.

Solar farm—site allocation

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (11:32): I would like to take the time allotted to me, firstly, to correct the record, as it is the right thing to do. I was speaking earlier in the budget debate about site allocation for the solar farm and I referred to block 183 Tennant. When I was rechecking the maps after I spoke, I realised that I was suffering from a bit of dyslexia. I said that block 183 Tennant appeared to be behind the wall of the Tennant dam, but that was block 138. I do apologise to members. Block 183 Tennant is in fact a burnt-out forest plantation at the end of Smiths Road.

I will take the opportunity to review in more detail some of the sites that the Chief Minister’s Department have determined are worth looking at as possible sites for solar farms. They have allocated seven separate sites. There are actually eight blocks but two of them are side by side. It seems that the essential criterion is, as they all are, blocks bigger than 200 hectares. Some of them are quite interesting.

I have talked before about block 498 Stromlo, which is on the western slope below the water treatment works at Mount Stromlo, which seems to me a spectacularly


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