Page 5544 - Week 17 - Wednesday, 4 December 1991
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in terms of the way the city is to be planned and how it is to be developed. I can see the dilemma; but I do not see any way, other than this kind of provision, of building that sort of certainty in there.
I suppose it can be argued that three months is not long enough. I am not here being an apologist for the Government - I am sure the Minister can defend himself - but it seems to me that the plan is right now going through a very exhaustive test of scrutiny by the community. The period for that scrutiny has already been extended. I would have thought that there is adequate opportunity for people to give that plan any degree of scrutiny that they wish. Even after they have done that and the plan is put into place, they still have a further three months in which to challenge any provision in it.
It seems to me, on the face of it, that that is reasonable, and once that period has expired people who have a concern for the plan, either in administering it or in carrying out operations under it, are entitled to some sort of certainty that what they are doing is not going to be challenged after they have, in some cases, spent a considerable amount of money. Somebody could come along and say, "No, I do not like that and I challenge the provision", and the best that could happen under those circumstances is that there is an injunction and everything stops while we go to a court hearing or something to determine whether the appeal is a good appeal or not.
That concerns me, I think, more than the probability that one or more citizens at some future time might be aggrieved and feel that they should have appealed against the provision but did not do so. I think on balance I would have to support the Government's view on this because of the ramifications of leaving it open.
Mr Berry: Now we are in trouble.
MR KAINE: Yes, you are in trouble. If you take this provision out nobody has any protection and there is no certainty in the plan whatsoever, I suspect.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (3.37): Mr Speaker, this is a matter about which Mr Moore and I had a quite long debate. We understand his arguments, where he is coming from; but we were not able in that period to come to any agreed wording. He argued that we should take it out and, if necessary, fix it in the time that certainly is available. It is just as logical to say, "Leave it in and, if it needs fixing, fix it later".
It is certainly the case that this is one of the measures that arose out of the widespread support for certainty in the provisions. It is also the case that it is a means of providing security to people who may have taken certain
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