Page 4739 - Week 15 - Thursday, 21 November 1991
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MR COLLAERY: Some of our scars are recent; some of our scars will never fade. The fact is that this planning document, the Planning Report of the draft Territory Plan, concedes at page 73 that the new focus, at the moment, is to be on land use and the processing of proposals for buildings, works and subdivision, pending joint studies with the NCPA.
Why is it not reasonable to ask that the current strategies that the electors of this Territory have endorsed for years remain in place? They are not all strategies, I might add, that the Rally likes; but at least it is a strategic front for the continued management of the Territory's leasehold system. I really ask members to consider carefully how they will vote on this matter. We are simply saying, "Let us keep a strategy, for better or for worse. It is a strategy that we have". Otherwise, we will leave a vacuum, and I fear that that vacuum will see our city change.
There are urgent necessities about planning at the moment in terms of proposals for buildings, works, subdivision and land use. You have only to see the discos springing up all over the place - some of them in quite inappropriate places - to see what is happening under a scatter block system of planning in the city, whereby land use controls have again slipped as they did in 1980 and 1981.
We now have a rash of new discos in Manuka; we are getting them in the city. We are seeing the historic Sydney Building turn into some neon lit strip, and we saw yesterday the problems of violence and alcohol as a result of that concentration. Land use approvals are being given for sites next to laneways - next to all the wrong areas. I mention a particularly significant wooden structure in this city - I will not go any closer; I do not want to ruin any immediate business. Those approvals are wrong because the Metropolitan Policy Plan strategy has been ignored.
In 1979 it took me nearly nine months to get approval for a client to put a canvas awning up over the Croissant D'Or French patisserie. That is how strict the NCDC was about the heritage Sydney Building and the Melbourne Building. Look at the slide now. Look at what has happened to those two old colonnaded structures. And look at the risks to the youngsters who, at up to 700 at a time, pack into at least one of those buildings.
So, what we need to have is a return to the strategy. I am not saying that the strategy has been well enough observed. But at least it is there, and it has been formulated by the great planners - the late Peter Harrison and others.
MR MOORE (9.42): I might take time to speak to my amendment. We are at an absolutely critical stage. I think most of us have accepted that there is no long-term strategy. The criticisms that I have made of the draft Territory Plan are primarily based on the fact that it does not have a long-term strategy driving it. That is what has created the problems within the plan.
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