Page 5878 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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Mr Speaker, I think that again I can say, as we did yesterday in the debate on Theodore, that the processes work. Plans are put out - they are drafts - and they are certainly capable of improvement. The Planning Authority attends to comments that are made. Members of this Assembly, individually and collectively, as now, make their comments. I believe that the proposal, after the most careful consideration and modification to it, is one that this Assembly should support.
MR MOORE (11.27): Mr Speaker, it seems to me that the reason we see objections from the Residents Rally to this sort of development is that they get caught up with the minutiae and lose sight of the issues for which they were originally formed. It had to do with the overall concepts about the planning of Canberra. This particular variation is a quite positive development that can add to the nature of Manuka. It is not about an issue that has to do with the major involvement of planning and conceptual planning in Canberra. It is not to do with, for example, the idea of employment being concentrated in Civic Centre as opposed to being decentralised into the town centres or with the quality of life that people have there.
Mr Collaery looks absolutely delighted because he has some great strategy here that suddenly Michael Moore is going to be taken out of the planning area as a commentator on planning. On the contrary, it has always been part of my interest to check and see where planning development seems appropriate and where it does not seem appropriate.
In this case, to me, having read through this very carefully, this is a quite appropriate development that I believe will enhance that shopping centre, and that is really a positive move. I do not have this idea that every single thing that is done by the Planning Authority or by the Economic Development Division has some great scheme behind it, a scheme that is somehow or other manipulated by Paul Whalan in the background, with a great effort at conspiracy by all sorts of public servants, ex-Ministers and politicians from all over the place, who have all worked to ensure, not exactly that money has been changing hands but at least that there has been a great deal of influence, in all these ways, in some seedy way. I do not think that has been the case at all. It has been a quite straightforward application. It has been considered in the light of current plans and a variation has been proposed.
I think this fits into very much the same sort of issue that Mr Jensen got caught out on as far as Theodore went yesterday, which caused him finally to say, "Well, they asked me to put it up". They asked you to put it up! Big bloody deal! What they asked you to do does not mean that you have to do it. What you should do is make your own decision. When somebody asks you to do something you should say - - -
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