Page 1002 - Week 04 - Thursday, 18 June 1992
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We ignore proper public consultation processes on matters of policy change at our peril. As someone who has worked in the community sector for many years, I know and I am convinced that an empowered and informed community is best able to understand decisions of government, and can participate more constructively in the affairs of our community. With 11 changes made in this instance to the design and siting policies for townhouse, cottage and courtyard blocks, I feel strongly that the fact of a seven-year delay in asking for public consultation should not now be used as an excuse to avoid the proper processes of open community consultation.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.32): Madam Speaker, I do not have any dispute with Ms Szuty when she says that an empowered and informed community is the best way to gain agreement and to process matters. I think our community is informed on this matter. They have been informed, as she says, over seven years. Everybody who has proposed a change here, everybody who has sought this, knows about it. Certainly the builders - the building side of that two-way process between building and buying - are aware of it, and home owners have benefited from it. I do not know that I accept the comment she has made that there has been inadequate consultation. We are now putting into legislation what has been happening, with wide agreement, over a long time.
Let me be a bit more precise. The Land (Planning and Environment) Act which we passed last year specifies two considerations for the approval of a request by the ACT Planning Authority that it not be required to seek public comment on the draft variation. The first of these is if the variation is to correct a formal error. The second is that the variation, if approved, would not affect the rights of any person in a manner prejudicial to that person. It is that second consideration that the Executive took into account in this case, and the reasons for the Executive's decision are very simple. Firstly, it will simplify the handling of development applications. That in itself is not a reason for change, but it is sensible and it provides for equity. There has been no objection over the years to the discretionary use of the now proposed standards. Rather, there have been strong objections to the Planning Authority's attempts to enforce the higher fence heights which the motion seeks to retain.
If the motion is agreed to by the Assembly, the result will be that builders and lessees either will have to comply with the old and unwanted - clearly unwanted - standards or will have to go through a costly and time-consuming exercise of notification through advertising in the press, placing a sign on the site and writing to neighbours. The policy followed for seven years can no longer be successfully carried out. The stringent requirement for notification in the new legislation would impose considerable delays and cost on the home purchaser at the lower end of the market. The variation, on the other hand, will allow builders and lessees to use standards which have applied for that seven-year period.
The Government, quite simply, is not prepared to place on a building industry which is only just coming out of a recession the unnecessary burden that the motion requires. The impact would be to impose a fee and a delay on the 40 per cent of homes at the lowest end of the housing market. This affordable
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