Page 1140 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video


But in the Assembly in the last sitting week and in this sitting week she has said to the Assembly something quite contradictory, which I have quoted before, and that is that it was the Little Company of Mary that was pushing for a heads of agreement and the Little Company of Mary head pushing that that be signed before the caretaker period.

So the minister needs to clarify that issue, and until she does so I will be keeping on this point because it is very difficult for me to understand how she has not misled this Assembly. I do not understand how that is, or whether the letter that she wrote in 2008 was not correct. One of them has got to be wrong. It is difficult to understand which one it is. Maybe she did not think that I had a copy of this letter. Maybe that is the issue. Maybe she thought that she could rewrite history. She has accused me of rewriting history. Perhaps it is the minister who has rewritten history.

I will continue on with this issue, and I and my colleagues will consider what action we will take within the Assembly, but I give the minister—I believe she is away on a pair, but her staff may be listening—the opportunity to come down here and at the earliest opportunity tomorrow correct the record, because if she does not then, as I see it, it is difficult to conclude other than a mislead of the Assembly.

Molonglo Reach—access

Raize the Roof ball

OzHarvest trivia night

MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Hargreaves): I call Mr Smyth, and you have waited patiently.

MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (6.37): I have waited patiently, and indeed, Mr Assistant Speaker, if we are talking about waiting patiently, I will start with that I am currently waiting patiently for an answer from the Chief Minister, Mr Stanhope, on a constituent matter that I wrote to him about on 27 February this year.

It was a representation from the waterskiing community about access to Molonglo Reach. The lady who wrote on behalf of the community had been advised that the Molonglo was to be cleared by the end of January this year. Here we are at the end of March and it is not cleared, so I wrote to the Chief Minister on 22 February asking what progress was happening and if indeed it was unable to be cleared in time for at least part of the waterski/wakeboard season perhaps consideration might be given to other areas. I have not had a response to that.

On 22 March I wrote again saying I had still got no response from the Chief Minister. I notice in this morning’s Canberra Times in the “Capital briefing” column that there is a small snippet headed “Water-skiing closed” which reads:

The Molonglo Reach water-ski area will remain closed until the end of the water-ski season in April.”

Clearly, those that waterski are very limited by the amount of space that we have for them. It is unfortunate that the season is now completely lost. But it is interesting that


Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video