Page 163 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 14 February 1990
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is most important that that position is remedied, but it is a matter of fact that the control over those authorities has been and is exercised by the Federal Government. Total control of all land and its development may have been all right to get the national capital moving in the 1950s, but it is totally inappropriate now that the ACT has grown. It has a life of its own, and the right to make decisions which affect that life rests with the people of Canberra.
Restrictive policies will cost money. I will give a couple of examples. Wide roads cost more to build and maintain. That is not to say that there is anything wrong with wide roads, but the people who decide whether there ought to be wide roads and whether they should maintain them for the future are the ones who pay for them, and that is us and the rest of the people of Canberra. I think it is most appropriate that we have a say in those planning decisions. Such decisions rightly belong to the people of the ACT.
The draft National Capital Plan seeks too much power for the National Capital Planning Authority; the Territory Planning Authority is left to look after neighbourhoods only. Under the plan the Territory Government, this Government - I will come back to what might be something that should be considered in the context of this Government - and the people of Canberra will be frozen out. The unfortunate cavalier attitude of "It's all leasehold, so we'll do what we want" still predominates. It claims that all town centres and all of Civic are places which have no bearing on the National Capital Plan but affect everyone in the community. Decisions on planning in these areas are properly the responsibility of the people of the Australian Capital Territory.
I do not think too many people in the Territory would argue against that, except those who argue for green spaces and who are of the view that this Assembly may not protect the planning in the ACT in the way that it ought to. It nevertheless is appropriate that the exercise of protection is something that ought to be carried out by this Assembly. All of these places are where we live and work and where many of us bring up our families who will live and work here and who will have to pay for it as well.
It raises the question of the Government's views on planning and the draft National Capital Plan. We have seen a few versions. There does not seem to be that much consistency amongst the people opposite. There is a bit of confusion in the community, I suggest, similar to that which exists in relation to the confusing arrangements for the Executive Deputies, which have been discussed at other times in this place.
I suppose that brings us to the issue of whether the Commonwealth would willingly relinquish its hold over those areas of the Territory which ought one day to be the responsibility of this Assembly. I hope that the Government and this Assembly will be able to demonstrate
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