Page 1546 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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we are entirely consistent with what we said here. There is nothing that we are doing that we did not indicate to the community would emerge or could emerge in the future. Your nonsense remarks are due merely to the fact that you do not understand the planning processes in this town and you endeavour to make political capital where none can be made. We have been quite open and up front in all that we have done.
I will not go on for too long, but let me tell you about these investigation areas. We went honestly to the community. We did not hide anything. We went out to the community - and you know the reaction - and said, "Look, maybe these are areas that we could look at in the future. Let us investigate them". But they were investigation areas.
Mr Kaine: And then you pulled them out because you got a bit of a reaction during the election campaign.
MR WOOD: But do you not understand? You do not understand what they were. They were to be investigated or they had the potential to be investigated. For anything to happen if any change were proposed, we would have to go through all the procedures, all the planning requirements, and you never - - -
Mr Kaine: Well, why didn't you let it, instead of truncating it?
MR WOOD: It was a simple indication that maybe they could be looked at. You still do not see the point. Those "pink bits", if they were to be advanced, needed to go through the whole planning procedure. We said at the time, and we say again, that restoring the former land use does not stop us from putting forward draft variations, as we did yesterday. Nobody jumped up and down about it when we put draft variations on the table yesterday. Obviously they have to continue, and they will continue. They will continue in North Canberra with the building better cities proposal if the Commonwealth comes across. I suggest to you, first of all, that you attend to the debate and, secondly, that you get on top of the planning processes in this town.
MS SZUTY (11.19): Madam Speaker, I have spoken before on the topic of urban renewal in the context of strategic planning, and I would like to state that, per se, I do not disagree with the concept. What I do have difficulty with is the idea that urban renewal is being promoted by the Government as an opportunity for development by increment, where certain areas are targeted for increased population density, and that this process is promoted as being essential for the economic survival of the ACT.
I hope that this Assembly will soon pass my motion on a reference to the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure on the development of a strategic plan for Canberra to the year 2020. In my speech opening the debate on that motion I commented on a plan that has been put forward by the Government to undertake urban renewal in the inner northern suburbs. I felt then, as I do now, that there is a need to reconcile that view of North Canberra to the vision that the wider community has for the future. I spent a lot of that speech commenting on this need for a strategic approach to development that is driven by a vision of the city and environs that Canberra sees as its future. It may well include extensive urban renewal, but it may not.
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