Page 2062 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 August 2014
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Maybe that is just an indication of a difference in approach. We on this side actually represent our communities of interest rather than just doing what our ministers tell us to do.
I am not sure if Mr Rattenbury’s speech was made in his role as a Green or in his role as a member of the government; I do get confused. But it is quite clear that Mr Rattenbury is not having a good day. I am not sure what the problem is, but this has got under his skin. He should probably recognise that we have members of the community in here. Losing your cool, losing your temper on a repeated basis, does not do you any favours.
Let me go to the broader context. Let me make it very clear that the Liberal Party support urban infill and the Liberal Party support growth. But we support good planning and we support good development. It is clear from what we have heard here today that this is not it. It does not mean that we oppose development at the Canberra brickworks site—far from it. But we want to make sure that it is sympathetic to the Yarralumla community and that the development that we have when we grow our city, when we grow our town centres and when we grow our suburbs, is consistent with those suburbs and does something to enhance our amenity and not cause problems for people that live in Yarralumla or any other suburb.
Mr Barr’s speech, the minister’s speech, makes it clear that there have been failures here, there have been problems, and there is a long way to go. This is not the end of the process. But I am increasingly concerned that we have a perspective from this government that is to try to get as much money out of any development as they possibly can—in the words of Mr Quinlan, Mr Barr’s mentor, to squeeze until they bleed but not until they die. You are trying to squeeze every drop, every dollar, out of this at the expense of good planning and at the expense of the community.
The problem is that when you have a budget laden with debt, when you have a budget laden with deficit, when you have projects that are unaffordable, like hundreds of millions of dollars for light rail, or when you are pursuing an agenda to put a big, shiny stadium in the city and put in other developments, you need the money. That is what we are seeing here—the desire from the Treasurer to fill his debt-ridden coffers with as much money as he can, ultimately at the expense of the community.
Mr Coe: It is a cash grab.
MR HANSON: It is a cash grab, as Mr Coe says, in this case at the expense of the Yarralumla community.
Let us have this development go ahead; let us make sure it is done well; and let us make sure that the community’s interests are heard as we move forward with the Yarralumla brickworks, the Canberra brickworks, development.
MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (11.10): I wish to address Mr Barr’s amendment, but before I get on to that, I must start by apologising if I have got under the skin of Mr Rattenbury. I must apologise if Mr Rattenbury cannot quite handle the truth, because what happened, in fact, was that Mr Rattenbury’s office gave us the courtesy of calling us before we came down into the chamber to tell us that there was an
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