Page 5784 - Week 18 - Tuesday, 10 December 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
that large concentration of public housing. It is much more appropriate to spread such housing concentrations in areas that are much closer to community facilities, particularly the health and welfare facilities that are provided around some of our bigger group centres or town centres, rather than out in the suburbs.
There is no problem, I would suggest, with a nice cluster development of public housing on that block. If the policy plan for that area had been allowed to remain as it was, the Housing Trust, I would suggest, would have built a number of houses and there would not have been a problem. It would have gone ahead smoothly and no-one would have been any the wiser or would have had any problems. It was the attempt to increase the density of this area that was the problem.
As a result of this proposal some 25 submissions were made to the ACT Planning Authority. Unfortunately, one of the major concerns I have is the information that was provided to the Executive about this proposal. The first page of the submission of the draft plan to the ACT Executive for approval says, in the third paragraph:
On 9 October 1991 the ACT Planning Authority released a draft Variation (Annex B) for public comment. 22 submissions were received by the Authority and of these, 19 supported the Draft variation.
Mr Speaker, frankly, that is incorrect; it is wrong. Not only is it wrong; it is totally and absolutely wrong. It is completely the opposite of the facts.
Mr Kaine: It is either wrong or it is right, Norman.
MR JENSEN: Well, this one is really wrong, Trevor. On page 2 of annex C we see paragraph 4, which is headed "Summary of Comments". It says:
There were 25 responses received commenting on the draft Variation to the Territory plan.
Let us not worry about three responses one way or the other; I am not going to argue about that. However, at the bottom of the page it says:
Twenty-four respondents did not support the draft Variation.
For goodness sake, what is going on here? We have a recommendation to the Executive that says that 19 out of 22 supported it; but the facts are, quite clearly, that 24 out of 25 did not support it. On that basis alone it would seem to me that the document is a flawed document. This was signed by the Chief Minister, Ms Follett, and the Minister, Mr Wood. This is another one that did not get a date on it; Bill must have forgotten to date a couple of them. So, there we have a major problem.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .