Page 1271 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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Parliament House understood that there would not be the same number of jobs available after Parliament House was built as there were while it was being built. It would be madness for us to try to maintain a construction industry that matched that. That is not to say that we do not have a responsibility to ensure that as much work as possible is available within our plan.
All they had to do was establish a program for accommodating Canberra's Commonwealth public servants' office needs. Had that program been established, or if it is established now, the development will go in the right places, certainty will be there for the developers - that is most important and I echo that sentiment from Mr Kaine - so that they can serve the appropriate purpose that they have in our society, where we have a combination of needs for the planning and the development to be planning driven, not development driven.
I refer to the Weekend Australian and a comment from that paper last weekend. A principal of Concrete Constructions, Mr Bob Westman, said:
The new administration can see how ludicrous the decision is -
I presume he is referring to the Labor Government here -
and is enacting new legislation that will automatically change the zoning so we will be able to do our building.
His lack of understanding in terms of the zoning, I hope, also reflects his lack of understanding as to what the Government is doing and the fact that they realise that they do not need to enact any new legislation at all. A change of purpose can be achieved by the Minister, should he so wish.
The Canberra Times site is one of a series of 11A cases that have come before the Supreme Court. In fact there was a whole host of 11A cases that went before the Supreme Court, and there was some concern expressed by the Supreme Court that it had become just a rubber stamp body for the Minister and for the planning of Canberra until three cases that preceded the Canberra Times site case - the Morpath, the Tekmat and the Atherane cases.
Those three cases - in Northbourne Avenue, Turner; Moore Street, Turner; and Mort Street - were of course lost by the objectors, or won by the developers. There was no outcry then, no scream about the Supreme Court, no squeal about what an unfair system we had - not then, when residents were looking for a cheap and accessible appeals system. Nobody else was going to worry about it at that stage.
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