Page 5881 - Week 18 - Wednesday, 11 December 1991
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will be a diminution of 74 car parks not revealed in the brief dissertation on traffic management. So, what do the shoppers of Manuka get? What do the shopkeepers get? They get a net loss of 17 places.
As Mr Connolly knows, in administrative decision judicial review terms, we have an error on the face of this decision making process and we have an admission that the prime concern is to accommodate the additional parking demand. I quote from the Planning Authority:
Investigations indicated that the site could accommodate the required number of carparking spaces in a two level structure ...
That is wrong, Mr Wood. There is no net increase. There is a diminution. In any event, a net increase of 56 car places hardly has anything to do with the upsurge in parking for matinee performances during school holidays and the rest.
The Planning Authority refers to investigations into the traffic management and parking issues. I call upon the Labor Government to release those investigation papers. I call upon a government committed to open consultation to let us put those investigation documents before our own advisers. I just say that.
I move to some other issues and at this stage I have to declare an interest; I am a commercial lessee in Manuka. I put that on the record in case someone else takes the point. I am fully aware of the parking problems and the need to provide more footpath trade for our traders. In fact, I am a former solicitor for five of the prime commercial traders in Manuka. So, I assure you, unlike Mr Kaine's empty pronouncements, that I have had a very close and personal involvement over many years with the issues in Manuka. Mr Speaker, the one thing that my former clients and the traders in Manuka want is an increase in parking capacity. When they find out that it is a net decrease they will be very disappointed. They will be disappointed in the Government that approved the development that caused those matters.
The Rally has no wish to involve itself in the minutiae, as Mr Kaine or Mr Moore or someone said, of the planning design and siting issues subject to the concerns expressed by the Institute of Landscape Architects, which opposed the visual aspects of both of the proposed developments, the National Trust in its proposals, and other credible opponents of the development. We will go to the central core issue which will result in a successful legal challenge, in my view, to this development and that is that the authority has premised its approval on an increase in parking. There will not be any appreciable increase; on our argument, there will be a decrease.
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