Page 4179 - Week 14 - Thursday, 25 October 1990
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planning who is now departing, is that Canberra provides a large measure of satisfaction as an environment for living so far as its residents are concerned.
Mr Jensen: You should have read the one before it.
MR MOORE: Mr Jensen is interjecting that I should have read the paragraph before. I am sure he will come to that later. It is quite clear that there is a tremendous dissatisfaction on the part of the residents of the ACT with the way in which this Alliance Government handles its planning. The most scandalous of all issues as far as it goes is the schools, and perhaps the second most scandalous planning issue is the fact that the Alliance Government has decided to bypass the Supreme Court decision on the Canberra Times site. By doing so, this Government has shown a lack of understanding of the way Canberra works, the plan behind Canberra and the concepts driving the city which make it one that so many people like and enjoy living in. People want to retain its best characteristics.
Last night I was fortunate enough to attend the Royal Australian Institute of Architects Burley Griffin Lecture that was delivered by Ted Mack. One of the most interesting points that he made in his speech, which was on planning and democracy, was the notion that in North Sydney, in terms of open government, he instituted the idea that there were no secrets behind planning, no behind-closed-doors decisions. That was the sort of goal with which some members of this Assembly entered the election and with which they put together a political party.
In Mr Mack's experience, the argument - this is a most interesting argument for me - that commercial-in-confidence material must always remain in confidence went out the door. That was an unacceptable argument. He said that there was simply no such thing as in-confidence as far as commercial-in-confidence goes. Mr Mack said that, if a developer wanted to develop something in North Sydney, the moment the plans hit North Sydney Council they were public documents; there was no longer such a thing as commercial-in-confidence.
Whereas most of us tend to accept the concept of commercial-in-confidence as being important, he pointed out that North Sydney, at that time, was the highest developed area in Australia, through a very open planning system. The North Sydney Council and Mr Mack are recognised across Australia and in many other parts of the world for what some perceived as a successful experiment in democracy.
The first thing that this Government should be doing as far as its planning goes is making things available to people. One of the things that shocked me in the Estimates Committee hearings was a comment from Mr Jensen that indicated that he was aware of this planning document that the Estimates Committee was finally able to extract from
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