Page 5371 - Week 17 - Tuesday, 3 December 1991
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take an interest in the broad scale planning decisions, and the community will not accept the situation put forward by Mr Kaine, the Liberal leader, that there is a point where planners should abdicate in favour of innovative and interesting planning.
Mr Kaine, the Liberal leader, said that the Rally is somehow seeking to hold back innovative developmental activities within the Territory. I think there is a lot of cross-purpose argument in this. The Minister has said two different things in his introduction speech because there are two antithetical things in the Bill. We all realised that they were going into the Bill. It was a matter that was being pressed by the green-acre developers particularly; that is, they wanted predictability and a general permission to operate within an area without further appeal.
On the other hand, the Government is committing itself to consultation with the community. For example, it might be a community partly in place in the new suburbs of Gungahlin, and it might want to have a say about the ongoing developments within a few hundred metres, or within 100 metres, of newer suburbs and the rest. Of course, there will not be any third-party rights in that circumstance, as we see the concept of defined land.
So, I simply want to put on the record that this antithetical situation is a theme in the Bill. It is an attempt, we feel, to balance those two competing interests, and we feel that the "as of right" concept of development within those defined land zones will ultimately be challenged by the community. We think it would be better now to tackle the defined land concept to see whether we cannot actually reduce conflict and disagreement in the community by providing the same conciliatory processes - because they essentially are not only consulting but also conciliatory processes - that the Bill provides in other areas.
Of course, this is an appropriate juncture at which to say that many of us do not see the broad threat of many, many community based appeals that other people are apprehensive about. We believe that, by and large, we have responsible planners in the Territory and that, by and large, so long as the Territory Chief Planner has proper tenure and proper independence from a very powerful bureaucracy in the form of DELP, we will be safe.
Of course, one aspect of this is whether, in due course, the planners themselves can take the initiative to unshackle themselves from the defined land concept. It is there at the moment as a sop to those who fear that there will be unnecessary and unjustified interference in the early developmental stages of this legislation.
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