Page 4641 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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gets to the Assembly in its current form, many amendments will be required to ensure that the availability of appeal rights is not lost by the community. A prime example, of course, was the process we saw enacted in the Assembly yesterday. I will not dwell on that as I may be accused of reflecting on a past vote of the Assembly.
One very important concept that our policy fully supports is that of community consultation. I venture to suggest that many more developers are finally accepting the fact that adequate and careful attention to this factor, at least in Canberra, can often save them considerable time and effort and money. Might I be so bold as to suggest that the proponents of the Forrest bowling club development may have done better to take more notice of the concerns of the community during the early stage of the development proposal rather than to push ahead with what was clearly not wanted by the community. Had they done so, they may have saved themselves some money on their balance sheets.
On the issue of wider and more general consultation, we are disappointed to see that the Government has chosen to remove the statutory requirement for the establishment of a planning and advisory committee that was in the legislation developed by the Alliance Government. Before I entered the Assembly I was fortunate to serve on a non-statutory and non-paying committee established by the then National Capital Development Commission to involve the community via peak bodies in the planning process. I seem to recall that at the last meeting of the committee we were looking at proposals to change the design and siting guidelines that had applied in the ACT since 1974. I see that many of those concepts have been included in the Territory Plan that has been put before the community.
The Rally has always supported the concept of community consultation; it is something we worked hard for in government. It is unfortunate that the Minister has allowed himself to be talked into removing this very important body, which would have been invaluable in providing assistance and comment on the major planning policy decisions still to be made.
Mr Wood: I was not talked into it; I urged it.
MR JENSEN: You will get your turn, Mr Wood. The plan and this legislation will not put an end to the need to consider wider policy issues, and to do so without a reasoned and well-balanced advisory panel is seen to be a major deficiency of the legislation. We will be moving, in the detail stage and within the bounds of section 65, to re-establish this committee.
It was also very interesting to hear Mrs Grassby's suggestion that the only group in the ACT interested in planning matters is the Labor Party. It is significant that I do not recall seeing any members of the ALP at the seminars called by the Planning Authority as a focus for
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