Debates Day 2 - Wednesday 23 November 1994
Parliamentary Record 6
Debates for 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997; ParliamentNT; Parliamentary Record; 7th Assembly 1994 - 1997
1994-11-23
Made available by the Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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Debates
Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
Darwin
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Legislative Assembly of the Northern Territory
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https://hdl.handle.net/10070/281606
https://hdl.handle.net/10070/414128
DEBATES - Wednesday 23 November 1994 in November 1988. Particular reference was made to Wednesday 23 November in relation to the State Square project and statements were made about the $ 1.75m agreement. As I said, I read a considerable amount o f that debate because the minister reiterated that some crucial points were made. For that reason, I checked the Parliamentary Record. In fact, on Wednesday 23 November, the member for Leanyer, the then Minister for Transport and Works, answered a number o f questions. As I went through the answers to those questions, I noted some interesting issues that the minister raised at that time. In particular, I take members to the first question raised. The question was put by the present Leader o f the Opposition who was Deputy Leader o f the Opposition at the time. He asked the Minister for Transport and Works: When did the government agree to pay a developers fee to Tipperary Developments? The Minister for Transport and Works replied: Mr Speaker, I am pleased that the Acting Leader o f the Opposition has seen f it to ask the first o f the questions which were referred to by his leader last night. Agreement on the development was reached after lengthy negotiation with Tipperary Developments. It was formalised in a signed agreement on 28 October 1988 and the public was informed o f that through a media briefing on 31 October. I had a look for that media briefing of 31 October 1988 and, lo and behold, here it is: Mr Finch said the signing of the agreement opened the way for commencement o f site work on the project in the near future. The 2-part document contains agreements for both project management for State Square and the past 14 months of development work carried out by Tipperary on the project. I read that through again. I thought that copies o f the agreement between the government and Tipperary Developments had been tabled in this Assembly. I must admit that I had never read the fine print which stated that actually there were 2 agreements. I looked through the agreement and it appears to me that what we have is the agreement for the project development, which was tabled in this Assembly, and I believe that is no secret. Members o f the PAC became quite feral when it was tabled in the House and said that the documents had been tabled at a meeting o f the Public Accounts Committee. However, as they learnt subsequently, the documents tabled in this House did not come from the Public Accounts Committee. Nonetheless, that leaves open the question that, when the Public Accounts Committee asked specifically for copies of the agreements between Tipperary Developments and the government, and Multiplex and Tipperary Developments, in fact it was not given one o f the 2 Tipperary Developments documents - the document that established the basis o f the $1.75m fee or the amount that that agreement was for over the previous 14 months. I hope the minister will be in a position to table in this Assembly tomorrow the agreement that we have been asking for. 1852