Page 1548 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
I have already stated that I do not object per se to urban renewal. As I have often said in this Assembly and outside, the main and governing consideration should be: What do the people of Canberra want in terms of urban renewal? How can we make decisions about urban infill while the draft Territory Plan is still being considered? How do the people of Canberra view the idea of inner suburban renewal? Are those people who have paid high prices for land in these suburbs threatened by the proposal of higher population densities? What sort of residential mix will occur in these areas? What infrastructure costs are involved?
Madam Speaker, I would like to conclude my remarks with another observation. John Gilchrist observed in 1987 that there was at that time a serious breakdown in the planning and implementation strategies for Canberra's metropolitan growth. At that time he felt that Canberra was close to ceasing to be Australia's best planned city and would become just another city that failed because of a lack of will to implement its planning strategy. I feel very strongly that we need to develop that vision, that strategy, that will govern planning and provide a rationale for the Territory planning process. That requires some considered thinking by the community as to what it sees as the future of Canberra. Madam Speaker, I will support Mr Lamont's motion today, but I feel strongly that more needs to be done to fully consider the concept of urban renewal in the context of a strategic plan for the city of Canberra and the Territory.
MR MOORE (11.26): Madam Speaker, what politicians love - we have heard it often today - is to find a panacea for the ills that are afflicting society. Those of us who were fortunate enough to watch the Four Corners program on Monday night saw the attempts at achieving economic panaceas in Britain. Here, it seems to me that many people are saying that the panacea for the problems that are besetting Canberra will be simply to look for urban renewal.
Mr Lamont was very careful, in starting his speech, to avoid going for a panacea. He said that there is an integrated solution which relies on some greenfield development and some urban renewal. He was quite specific about breaking urban renewal up into renewing the suburbs that are there and in revisiting what Mr Wood has said are some of the "pink" areas but which he left off. The only viable alternative to developing greenfields is to look at the development of the inner city in particular. It is not actually the problem. The problem is the same one that is besetting the world, and that is that we do not have a sustainable population. We should be working towards having a sustainable population. When we have that, we can start to consider having sustainable cities. That is the real problem, and that is what we should be working towards.
In the meantime, because we are not going to get a solution to that, even in Australia, and in particular in the ACT, in a short time, it is important for us to look at some of the stopgap measures.
Mr Lamont: But how do you achieve a stable population?
MR MOORE: Mr Lamont interjects, "How do you achieve a sustainable and stable population?". The great challenge for anybody who is concerned about the environment in the next few years is to find the solution to that. Nobody knows. That is why we must keep working towards that. In the meantime we have to use these stopgap measures.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .