Page 135 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 24 May 1989
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MR COLLAERY (4.16): It is very gratifying to see that the matter of public importance brought on today by the Liberal Party has achieved such agreement in this chamber, and one hopes that the agreement will be translated quickly into action because action is sought. There is of course a developer in this town who under one trading name or another has bulldozed - and of course I am referring to the developer at Telopea Park West - several buildings that the community has sought to protect in recent times.
As far as the Residents Rally is concerned, that developer needs to have some better regard for community attitudes. One hopes that the Liberal Party with its superior contacts, often in the development area will use its particular place with the Canberra Development Board and other bodies and, indeed, with its own members to ensure that the policies formulated by the parliamentary wing of the Liberal Party in the ACT go to ground in the wider Liberal development world. One hopes that that will come about and be one of the greater products of this town.
The Rally of course welcomes the parliamentary Liberal wing in this Territory because we perceive that that stronger hand that those persons may have will have a much better influence on the developer element than some of the Liberal hopefuls-to-be have had in the past. One sincerely hopes that we can see action going back down the line to the developer body on these matters.
That is not to say the Rally does not have a level of agreement and debate with the developer lobby, but it has been very much a case of the Rally having to carry the whole argument in this town for too long, to our disadvantage, and it has created an image of the Rally being anti-development, which is far from the case.
Specifically, without taking up the time of this Assembly much longer, the Rally also wishes to see a committee formed within this Assembly - regrettably it was not formed with the committees that were bulldozed through us yesterday, but hopefully the Chief Minister will relent - on the subjects of environment, conservation and heritage.
One should hope that the Interim Territory Planning Authority is quickly headed by a person of vision again. I am not harking back to an old vision of Canberra, but we need a vision for Canberra again. The current acting occupant of that job cannot, as far as the Rally is concerned, claim to have that office in the future. The Rally has said quite publicly that we need now a change at the helm.
We have established to the satisfaction of the community that that person has not been able to devote sufficient attention to the task so as to avoid divisiveness in the community, conflict and even suspicion about the levels of influence in the former NCDC and now in that task. We mean nothing personal in that regard with respect to Mr Geoff
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