Page 850 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 16 June 1992
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While I sympathise with the general proposition that Ms Szuty is putting forward, that there should be consultation on matters like this, I believe that this is a case where public consultation simply would have endorsed the fact that the community has accepted these standards for some years and it would have been, again, a wasteful exercise, in my view. So, as with Mr Lamont, I endorse the majority finding of the committee.
MR MOORE (8.12): It is interesting to hear the perceptions of community consultation that the Leader of the Opposition puts in agreement with the members of this committee with the exception of Ms Szuty. If the precedent that you are setting here is to say that we do not want any community consultation, that since things are now done this way we will simply adopt that as the practice, then, in fact, you are missing a major step in the whole process. Planning in particular in the ACT has been about and ought to be about an appropriate process; otherwise what we establish is the notion that it becomes a positive thing to keep breaching standards. So we then establish a new standard by that method.
The difficulty with the precedent that is being set in this particular instance is that you are then missing the opportunity for all members of the community to say, "Do we want this as our standard?". You are also saying to the Planning Authority, "If you are allowing something to go ahead just simply by not policing it, you can then make that the standard". This is another way of going about changing plans and changing methods by which we do things. It is changing standards. The most appropriate way is to be up-front, instead of using this stealthy method, and to say, "Okay, that has happened in the past; now we want to change the standards; let us make it a public issue; this is the standard we want to change", and then go through the appropriate process.
It seems to me that recommendations of a committee along these lines are entirely inappropriate, more than anything because of the precedent they set in accepting a change of standards rather than recognising a failure to retain and maintain the standards. It really is a method by which we will simply lose the standards of planning that have delivered a city of which all of us are proud.
MR LAMONT (8.14), in reply: I will pick up one point that was raised in relation to the dissenting report and the reasons why the committee, in the majority report, believe that on this occasion the issuing of the certificate about limited consultation was appropriate. Madam Speaker, the proposed variations have been the subject of considerable consultation within the industry. That is where a significant number of the comments in relation to the Act have taken place in the past.
There is a procedure outlined in the new Act in relation to public consultation. What it will mean is that, for every single townhouse, for every single block the subject of this variation, you would have to go out to public consultation. That, indeed, is what will happen if the process is not able to be concluded prior to 1 July. That immediacy was one of the issues that the committee took into account. I am also aware that the reason why this is not in existence at the moment is that the last time that these matters were being addressed this proposition, basically, just fell off the end of the legislative process. That is my understanding in relation to why we are dealing with it now. I commend the report.
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