Page 1273 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 23 August 1989
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very careful of our attitude to the court because, if we find a way to undercut the court's decision, that will reflect our attitude to that process.
That is not to say that we ought not to work towards a cheaper, more accessible planning appeals system. Of course we should. We have pushed that for a long time. Let me point out, of course, that Justice Else-Mitchell was the chief judge of the New South Wales Land and Environment Court. One of the things that we are at risk of doing is protecting business incompetence.
When they lodged the application for their change of purpose clause in May 1988, Concrete Constructions were well aware through their various firms what the lease purpose clause was. But prior to that, when they were arranging settlement, the Canberra Times themselves had taken on the responsibility to change the purpose of the clause, but Concrete Constructions, in a poor business decision, themselves - and this was told to me directly by Mr Bob Westman and probably to you when he went around lobbying the various members of the Assembly - had decided to go ahead with the settlement despite the fact that they did not have the 11A change, that they did not have the change of purpose clause, although earlier they had, because it was settled in September 1987 and earlier there were indications that they would not be able to change the lease purpose clause to allow them to build office blocks.
The problem really exists because they paid $7.5m for the Canberra Times site, a price which is appropriate for a site for office blocks. However, if they cannot build office blocks, it would have been much more appropriate to pay, say, $2.5m or something along those lines. But they committed themselves, so they felt they had to build office blocks. There ought to be a development on the Canberra Times site. There should be an appropriate development, but it is not the responsibility of the ACT Government to bail out Concrete Constructions to the tune of $5m plus what they have lost in interest on top of that. I have heard the figure bandied around of up to $13m.
Let us not be mistaken about the importance of this decision by Justice Kelly. It is the first environmental impact statement we have had on Civic. The section 38 development, which Mr Kaine referred to earlier, resulted in a joint parliamentary committee hearing. By the way, I should point out that Ros Kelly chaired that committee. They called for an environmental impact statement into Civic.
It was never done, and it still has not been done. The closest thing we have got to it is this particular judgment by Justice Kelly, who listened to a group of planners, transport planners and other experts including the chief planner of the NCDC, and made his decision.
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