Page 4148 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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important ones. But I draw your attention to paragraph (2), which calls on the government to do a range of things and then says:
(e) ensure that ACTPLA’s review of the Territory Plan’s commercial zones codes:
(i) takes into account the Supermarket Competition Policy …
So we are talking about supermarkets, and particularly the supermarkets in Giralang, simply because of the changes to the government’s supermarket policy. There are substantial issues which Ms Hunter has touched upon—well, more than touched upon; that is ungracious. Ms Hunter spent a lot of time talking about the significant issues that the people of Giralang have experienced over years of mismanagement of this whole issue by this government.
It is interesting to see that we have come full circle. Minister Corbell was the minister responsible when this whole issue blew up in 2002 and here we are in 2011, nine years later, waiting to see a resolution of this matter, which, for better or worse, has been put off again because of matters in the courts. All along, whatever the merits of the argument on one side or the other, the people of Giralang are the people who are suffering most in this.
People in my electorate have been dealing with this festering sore of a wrecked building in the heart of their suburb for the best part of nine years. It is unreasonable that our constituents, the people who pay our salaries, have had this eyesore, this wrecked building—it has been vandalised, it is boarded up. It makes Giralang look like some rustbelt town, and it does not deserve that. There have been proposals over time to at least clear the block and to take away this festering sore, but the government cannot get itself together to do this.
There are some issues that Ms Hunter touched upon in a slightly indignant manner which I think need to be clarified. Ms Hunter seems to be labouring under the misapprehension that Ms Le Couteur has had a motion on the notice paper for some time in relation to the setting up of a select committee. I know that there has been discussion around the corridors of this place for some time in relation to supermarket policy and an inquiry into it, but I note that the notice paper says that Ms Le Couteur gave notice only yesterday of a motion in relation to supermarket policy. There was some confusion yesterday as to whether there was a motion on supermarket policy and when it would be dealt with. But notice of the motion was given yesterday.
Ms Hunter was also very concerned about Mr Seselja having the audacity to criticise them for their approach. The issue of the supermarket competition policy goes back a couple of years now. We have seen, all through this, the Greens and the Labor Party working in coalition on this matter. In November 2009, we had a debate in this place in relation to supermarket policy. Mr Seselja moved a motion calling on the government to have a competitive and transparent process that did not exclude independent operators in the allocation of new supermarket sites in the ACT.
Labor and the Greens refused to support that motion and Ms Hunter went on the radio to say that she supported the government approach and that the ACT Greens therefore
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