Page 4799 - Week 13 - Thursday, 28 November 2019

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I am astounded. I say to the minister and to Minister Gentleman: do not dare go down the path of simplistically suggesting that this is the Canberra Liberals ignoring the problems and siding with developers. That is not the case, and ministers Ramsay and Gentleman know that that is not the case. The Greens know full well that it is not the case. The Greens are fully aware of the lack of what could be considered correct process on this. But they are frightened of the optics of suggesting that anything is wrong with this bill because they might be accused of being building quality deniers.

This is a sad day. This is too important to get wrong and the fact that we are just going to ram this through because we are worried about what other people might think if we examine it properly is shameful. I am dismayed. Minister Ramsay in his frequent attacks on me suggests that I reduce everything down to lowest common denominator, simplistic arguments in all of my commentary about government policy. The minister is doing exactly what he accuses me of doing all the time.

My office has hurriedly drafted some amendments to deal with the most obvious flaws to this bill, but we certainly have not had sufficient time to get those amendments properly drafted and go through scrutiny, so we will deal with those a little bit later. I know that those amendments, as utterly reasonable as they are, have Buckley’s chance of getting up because of the political landscape I have already outlined.

The Greens will not support them, not because they do not think they are a good idea but because they do not wish to be seen to be doing anything that might be fair to those evil developers. Labor will not support them because, as is always the case—I think even more so as we lurch towards their final year in government—they do not wish for the Canberra Liberals to be a part of any solution to anything. It does not matter that they might be right; it does not matter that good process has not been followed, as long as you can be seen to be doing something to fix the problem, as long as you can go out to your supporters and say how out of touch those Liberals are, who cares? Who cares if you end up with bad policy? I am just astounded.

Without further ado, I move:

That debate be adjourned.

The Assembly voted—

Question resolved in the negative.

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