Mr MILLS - 2004-11-30
Former Labor politician and town planner, June D’Rozario, in opposing your plans for the Darwin waterfront development, accused you of: ‘a complete and shameless abrogation of every documented promise given by government’. Is it not true that June D’Rozario has made these comments because you broke your promise and have abandoned the building height restrictions that were put in place by the CLP for this development under the Central Darwin Planning and Land Use Objectives documents? Is it not true that your own SOCOM report found that all participants in the public consultation supported the principle of having no buildings exceeding the central part of the escarpment? Why have you shamelessly abrogated your promises that no building on the development would exceed the level of the escarpment?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, again, I say to the Leader of the Opposition: stop coming in here and making assertions that were not what government said. Let me deal with what June D’Rozario has said, and it refers back to the answer I gave first in Question Time, about the hotel and car parking development that is in front of Bridgeport. I have been quite up-front about that.
Part of the reason we are having a public consultation period is to identify whether there are issues that need to be dealt with ...
Members interjecting.
Ms MARTIN: I ask the Opposition Leader, if he asks a question – and it was a multifaceted question; it had about five different parts to it – that he give me a chance to answer it. Okay? If you do not want to have the question answered …
Mr Mills: Oh, get on with it!
Ms MARTIN: We had public consultation, we put out the proposal from the preferred developer, and it is a very exciting one. However, part of that time for public consultation - without the statutory process, which we are going through with some development applications now - was to get community feedback. Very early on in that …
Mr Burke: Oh, so the plan changed, did it? You just told us the plan was locked in concrete.
Mr HENDERSON: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Madam SPEAKER: It would be nice if the Chief Minister could give her reply without interruption.
Ms MARTIN: It would be nice if the opposition just came out and said they do not want to see this project go ahead, because that would be honest. That would be good and honest: they do not want to see the jobs and they do not want to see the opportunity for Darwin development.
We have a public consultation process which gives our community a real chance to look at the model and the information and give us feedback. Very quickly in that time. it was identified that there was an issue with how the hotel was positioned in relation to Bridgeport. Immediately, we had the developers and officers from government go in and start talking to the Bridgeport residents. There have been about five meetings; there was one yesterday afternoon, and June D’Rozario was part of that – and those discussions are ongoing. There has been some heated response over that, and we have heard some of that aired publicly.
However, it is an issue that we identified very quickly, because we had the opportunity to get information out to the community. We are looking at how we can maximise the outlook from the Bridgeport units on the lower level. Interestingly enough, those two units that are at the heart of this are actually below escarpment level. However, those discussions are ongoing and I can understand the anger. That is part of why we are having consultations. We have had those broad consultations, we now have the statutory ones. Part of that went out last Friday to development applications.
It is interesting, from the opposition’s point of view that, over the last month or so, they have bagged government for saying that glossy brochures and all this information was going out to the community, and now we are being accused of not telling the community what we are doing. You cannot have it both ways. It smells of hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy is all with the opposition.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, again, I say to the Leader of the Opposition: stop coming in here and making assertions that were not what government said. Let me deal with what June D’Rozario has said, and it refers back to the answer I gave first in Question Time, about the hotel and car parking development that is in front of Bridgeport. I have been quite up-front about that.
Part of the reason we are having a public consultation period is to identify whether there are issues that need to be dealt with ...
Members interjecting.
Ms MARTIN: I ask the Opposition Leader, if he asks a question – and it was a multifaceted question; it had about five different parts to it – that he give me a chance to answer it. Okay? If you do not want to have the question answered …
Mr Mills: Oh, get on with it!
Ms MARTIN: We had public consultation, we put out the proposal from the preferred developer, and it is a very exciting one. However, part of that time for public consultation - without the statutory process, which we are going through with some development applications now - was to get community feedback. Very early on in that …
Mr Burke: Oh, so the plan changed, did it? You just told us the plan was locked in concrete.
Mr HENDERSON: A point of order, Madam Speaker!
Madam SPEAKER: It would be nice if the Chief Minister could give her reply without interruption.
Ms MARTIN: It would be nice if the opposition just came out and said they do not want to see this project go ahead, because that would be honest. That would be good and honest: they do not want to see the jobs and they do not want to see the opportunity for Darwin development.
We have a public consultation process which gives our community a real chance to look at the model and the information and give us feedback. Very quickly in that time. it was identified that there was an issue with how the hotel was positioned in relation to Bridgeport. Immediately, we had the developers and officers from government go in and start talking to the Bridgeport residents. There have been about five meetings; there was one yesterday afternoon, and June D’Rozario was part of that – and those discussions are ongoing. There has been some heated response over that, and we have heard some of that aired publicly.
However, it is an issue that we identified very quickly, because we had the opportunity to get information out to the community. We are looking at how we can maximise the outlook from the Bridgeport units on the lower level. Interestingly enough, those two units that are at the heart of this are actually below escarpment level. However, those discussions are ongoing and I can understand the anger. That is part of why we are having consultations. We have had those broad consultations, we now have the statutory ones. Part of that went out last Friday to development applications.
It is interesting, from the opposition’s point of view that, over the last month or so, they have bagged government for saying that glossy brochures and all this information was going out to the community, and now we are being accused of not telling the community what we are doing. You cannot have it both ways. It smells of hypocrisy, and the hypocrisy is all with the opposition.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016