Page 3646 - Week 08 - Thursday, 19 August 2010

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there in 1996 and was too gutless to stand up and say anything. Today Gary Humphries is similarly too gutless to stand up—

Members interjecting—

MR SPEAKER: Thank you, members. Let us restore some decorum. Ms Le Couteur, you have a question without notice.

Land—Yarralumla brickworks

MS LE COUTEUR: My question is to the Minister for Land and Property Services and concerns the Yarralumla brickworks and the proposed associated development. Minister, why did you instruct the LDA that funding for brickworks heritage restoration must come from the proceeds of new development in Yarralumla?

Mr Hargreaves: Are you going to pay for it?

Mr Smyth: There was a ban on the brickworks for nine years and Simon Corbell—

MR SPEAKER: Let us hear from the minister first.

MR STANHOPE: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, and I thank Ms Le Couteur for the question. I have to say—though to be honest I will always check it, having been asked—that I cannot recall that I have given the LDA any such direction. In fact, I am not sure that I have given the LDA any directions in relation to the Canberra brickworks, other than through an exhausting, objective, transparent and inclusive consultation process—engaging through that process a number of leading architects, expert consultants, designers and heritage professionals—to work with them to develop some proposals for the preservation and protection of the Yarralumla brickworks as, indeed, one of the most significant heritage sites in Canberra and Australia and to develop proposals through a detailed community consultative process.

Through that process the consultants have come up with four essential models, the basest of them being, as you would have noticed, Ms Le Couteur, that we simply expend $7 million on restoring the fabric and essentially lock the gate. That is option 1. That particular option would not require the sale of any land. It might be that, at the end of the day, the option, if accepted, is that we do that; we simply accept our responsibility to ensure that the building does not fall down, spend an anticipated $7 million that would be required to achieve that and lock the gate. That is option 1.

To suggest that, in order to achieve that option, we are going to sell land and that this is some grab for cash and this is all about associated development, in the context of developing any of the value-added responses, three additional options have been proposed. Through those three additional options, there would be a significant capital investment. I understand that option 4, the most expansive, would require in the order of just under $100 million of investment.

I would suggest that—and this would be my position; I am sure I have not instructed the LDA to this effect—if through this process option 4, the $100 million option, were


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