Page 1453 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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The Government seems to forget that land values are very often determined by the closeness to open space, even if just across from the open space is a school. The Government is effectively devaluing a lot of properties in these suburbs. These other people are now joining in, and they have not had the background of information that those who have been part of the campaign thus far have acquired.
It would have been simple to put in some diagrams or a map to show what was there. It is still open to the Government to do so. Mr Kaine says that there are going to be further advertisements, but he said "only as a reminder". I hope they take the opportunity to make it more than a reminder, so that people can clearly see what the impact is going to be. For the benefit of the Government, it may be that many people will say, "Oh, that is the area. That is okay. You are leaving all this other green space. I can accept that". It may well have been to the Government's advantage to have done that.
I heard this matter debated on ABC radio the other morning. It seemed to me that the officer from the planning agency was saying, in effect - and I am putting my interpretation on it, let me be clear - that the objections will really be valid only if it comes down to discussing the relationship between green space and population, and that a great number of other objections will not really have any effect. I hope that is not the case. We do not need to determine the amount of green space we have simply on the basis of population and population generating so much green space.
I said yesterday that Canberrans value their city. I am sure you know that, although you act otherwise. They do not want to see intrusion into the ample green space that we have. I acknowledge that it is ample. They do not want to see, and neither do I, any intrusion into the green space.
I will make a comment about these variations; the green forms that come out. I would place them in the middle range of understandability. They are not very bad, nor are they very good. I think great effort has been made, over some period of time, to make them understandable. However, for the average citizen who is reading these for the first time - if they follow this path of objection - it takes a bit of working through. I am sure that we would all agree that we have to make things as understandable as possible. We cannot go claiming public consultation if we put any sort of impediment on that path.
Yesterday I copped a serve from Mr Jensen, and fair enough, because I had not read this document in full. In fact, I had not read the back of the last page. I received this about lunchtime, when coming down in the lift, and I missed a comment about the trees at Hackett being retained. Nevertheless, I am not very impressed with what security may have been given to those trees. The document says that they will be retained. It is a magnificent and fairly extensive stand of timber.
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