Page 849 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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MS SZUTY (8.08): Madam Speaker, I hereby register my dissent from the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee's decision on the draft variation to the Territory Plan regarding the design and siting policies for townhouse, cottage and courtyard blocks. The reasons for my dissent are as follows. Notwithstanding that the variations sought have been common practice in the ACT for as long as seven years, I believe that the wider community should be given the opportunity to comment on the formal adoption of these changes. While I do not agree that consultation is necessary in the case of each construction, public discussion of the proposed policy change is recommended.
The formalisation of current practice has taken seven years to come to the attention of the Planning, Development and Infrastructure Committee of the ACT Legislative Assembly, and I do not believe that the waiving of a proper public consultation process in the context of this timeframe is warranted. The proposed changes in relation to fence and garage standards, although comparatively minor, are important to bring to the attention of the wider community for comment before final judgment is passed. I foreshadow a notice of motion of disallowance to reject the draft variation to the Territory Plan entitled "Design and Siting Policies for Town House, Cottage and Courtyard Blocks".
MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (8.09): Madam Speaker, I support the recommendations of this committee. I do not agree with Ms Szuty on this point. The report deals with three different variation proposals. As Mr Lamont has said, one of them deals with a heritage area on Canberra Avenue, and the proposal that was considered by the committee, in my view, is a very good treatment of that area. It preserves the heritage aspects of the buildings, yet allows sympathetic buildings to be added to that complex so that the block is well used in the interests of the community.
On the particular question to which Ms Szuty alludes, and in connection with which she has lodged a dissenting report, I would generally agree with her proposition that community consultation is something that the Government should engage in. Indeed, it claims to do that. But, having spoken at some length to the officers of the Planning Authority and the leasing section on these matters, it was pretty clear that what was proposed and what the committee, in general, has accepted has been standard practice for many years. The only problem is that every time somebody wants to put the new standard into practice they have to go through the formality of seeking a waiver from the existing design and siting regulations.
There must be some hundreds of applications being processed every year. This wastefully uses resources that could well be put to other uses, slows down the processes for every applicant, and merely ends up with acceptance of what has been an agreed standard for many years. What the committee has done in this report is to agree that the revised standard, the new standard, is acceptable, and that we should change the design and siting rules so that that wasteful process of every applicant going through the motions of putting in an application for consideration and having it agreed automatically should cease. I think that it is a waste of community resources, Madam Speaker.
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