Mr HUNT (1:12 PM) —I rise to talk about the future protection of the land at Point Nepean in Victoria. I wish to set down four key principles for protecting this extraordinary piece of land: firstly, that there should be no housing; secondly, that we should seek some form of public ownership; thirdly, that we should seek to protect the bushland; and, fourthly, that there is sustainable and acceptable use of that land under a viable arrangement. I do this in the context of a promise which was made by the state government, which has severe difficulties within it. Last week the Victorian state government said that it would make that land a national park. On the face of it, that would seem a positive move. Yet if you look at the context, you will find that this proposal was a sham, a fraud, a fix, a farce and simply untrue, unbelievable and unsustainable. The reason is that the Commonwealth previously offered 260 hectares of land at Point Nepean to the Victoria government. It did that as an offer of land for free. It did not seek a dollar, a razoo or any other payment. It offered that land for free. What was the state government's response? The state government rejected that offer out of hand. On 20 March 2001 the Victorian Premier wrote to the Commonwealth saying, `The Victorian government is unable to accept the transfer of Point Nepean on the terms currently offered.' What were those terms? Those terms were that the Commonwealth government would give it this piece of land for free. That is an extraordinary situation.

Mr Adams —Tell the truth. That cannot be the truth.

Mr HUNT —That is the truth. Not just that, but the Victorian government ignored the fact that the Commonwealth had put in $4 million for restoration of the heritage buildings under the Federation Fund. On 11 September 2002, with the election approaching, the Victorian government revised its position on Point Nepean and said, `We will accept that land if you give us between $25 million and $35 million to manage it on an ongoing basis,' reversing all principles of land transfer within Australia over the last 150 years. It was an extraordinary position and one which was unsustainable.

Given that they wish to make a so-called `national park' out of the area, they were offered the land for free and rejected it. What more could they want? They want to make a windfall profit. They are holding the people of the southern peninsula to ransom whilst they seek to make windfall profit from the land. In particular, the Victorian government subsequently leaked the Prime Minister's response, saying, `We're very sorry, but we're not going to give you that,' without providing the detail that they had rejected the offer for free land, and followed it up with a request for $35 million. What was the basis of their request? They claimed that there would be unexploded ordnance which would need an extraordinary amount of expenditure to clean it up, yet the report released last week into the unexploded ordnance shows that the cost of remediation is almost negligible. What an extraordinary position!

This fits in with the fact that four days before the election the state government, with bipartisan report, passed green wedge legislation through the lower house which it said would protect the land at Point Nepean. It passed that legislation knowing that it was going to call an election the following week before the legislation could ever make it to the upper house and, therefore, having passage through both houses, given that there was a guarantee of bipartisan support. It claimed that it had legislated to protect that land, yet we all know that legislation requires two houses. It would have taken them two days of sitting at most to complete that, yet they prorogued parliament and in the process dissolved the legislation and made a mockery of their claim that they had protected the land under legislation. No such legislation exists and no such protections exist over the land. I call on the Victorian government to accept its responsibilities now. (Time expired)