Page 2235 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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MR SPEAKER: The minister’s time has expired.
MR STANHOPE:—the convention centre that they said they were interested in but they could not actually deliver.
MR SPEAKER: Order, Chief Minister, resume your seat!
MR STANHOPE: That is the Liberal Party’s record on capital.
MR SPEAKER: Resume your seat.
Gas-fired power station
MR SMYTH: My question is to the Chief Minister. Chief Minister, I refer to a letter that you sent to Mr Mackay and the chief executive of ActewAGL on 19 July 2007 in relation to the proposal for the data centre and gas-fired power station. The letter states that advice would be provided to you on the respective merits of the three sites identified in the letter. Chief Minister, did you receive that advice and what did it say about each of the three sites?
MR STANHOPE: I did receive advice of course in the context of a decision that was taken by me to cabinet and of course that particular document has a degree of confidentiality attaching to it. Whether or not advice outside of the cabinet submission was received by the government which analysed each of these sites side by side of course is something that I do not recall. I will take some advice on that. But certainly I am most pleased now that the Liberal Party acknowledges the existence of the letter that debunks every one of the outrageous claims it made in relation to this particular matter.
It is interesting that here at the end of the day, after all the fury and the force, we have the Liberal Party—I think it is the first time, in fact, that a member of the Liberal Party has acknowledged the existence of the piece of correspondence that debunks every single one of the claims and the nonsense that they have parroted in relation to this particular issue.
MR SESELJA: You can’t answer the question, can you, Jon?
MR STANHOPE: I am answering the question. It is the letter of 19 July which explains explicitly that the government had in place a process for assessing the relative merits of all of the blocks, and they were all under consideration, and that when that particular exercise had been concluded then of course decisions would be taken.
In relation to the nonsense propagated about actually moving away from a particular so-called preferred site on the basis of potential economic advantage to the territory, even the brief accompanying the letter, which Mr Smyth for the first time on behalf of the Liberal Party now acknowledges exists and which does debunk their entire case, covers it. I will read what the brief covering the particular letter says:
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