Page 154 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 1990
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suggest that one role is lesser than the other is nonsense. What we should be seeing - and perhaps in some ways I agree with the Chief Minister here - is a situation in which the planning authorities that affect the daily lives of people work in a way that will give us the best plan. In that way we should have them working together. It was Geoff Campbell of the Interim Territory Planning Authority who suggested that we could manage with one authority. Whilst I think that in some ways that may have been a solution to the problem, it would be difficult to see how that could work, with the one authority answering to two parliaments.
Therefore, what we need is a situation in which both the National Capital Planning Authority and the Territory Planning Authority, when it loses the "interim" part of its title, can work together, as the Chief Minister suggested, and resolve most of their problems without the sorts of conflicts that we have seen after the advent of the draft National Capital Plan.
Why have so many members of the community been disappointed with the draft National Capital Plan? Why have so many other members of the community been prepared to stand up and say, "This appears to be a good plan"? The reasons go to the very crux of the matter of planning in the ACT and the fact that the planning of the ACT has got out of balance in the last few years. Many members of the community wanted it to continue to be out of balance because they can make more money out of a planning system that is out of balance. They can make more money out of a situation which provides for the overdevelopment of Civic and the underdevelopment of an area like Tuggeranong which Mr Whalan purports to represent, but he is not prepared to ensure that the office development that belongs there goes there.
We have had the advantage of a most interesting report by consultants to the National Capital Development Commission before it was disbanded. The report was never publicly released; it was in draft form. It suggests that for every 1,000 office workers in Civic it would cost $3m less per year to put them in Tuggeranong, but that for those same 1,000 workers the once-off profit to the developer is an extra $2.5m. So there is an interest for developers to ensure that those people are placed in Civic. There is an interest for the people of Canberra at large, for the ratepayers, to ensure that they are not asked to pay an extra $3m a year for those 1,000 people.
That is the sort of figure that the Chief Minister must take into account when he is being rightfully lobbied by members of the development area. Considering his comments in relation to the $100m budget cuts that we will have to make, he should keep in mind the importance of that factor - what it will cost us to continue the development of Civic when those office workers belong in the town centres, such as Tuggeranong and, later, Gungahlin.
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