Page 1923 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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It also informs us of this:
A joint discussion document, presenting in detail the NCPA and the ACT Planning Authority's ideas for land use and development will follow this brief ...
Where is there mention in this brief of the thing that is most critical to the people of Canberra, the health facility? There is no mention of it.
I go back to Mr Wood's interjection about whose statement it is. Yes, it comes from the National Capital Planning Authority. But there is also a statement about a joint document coming from the NCPA and the ACT Planning Authority - his department - on ideas for land use and development which is to follow. So, what are the ideas on land use and development? It appears that the NCPA has not completed discussions with the ACT Planning Authority. It does not even need to go to the ACT Planning Authority. Talk to anybody in Canberra and they will tell you that basically there is a bipartisan approach to Acton Peninsula - there is going to be a health facility there. But is that health facility mentioned? Is this the beginning of a scheme to undermine the planning approach in Canberra?
Perhaps we should consider this word "charrette". You will not find it readily in any dictionary. I doubt very much that it is in Mr Stevenson's dictionary. We thought a "charrette" might be something like a cigar, but that is a cheroot. That sort of cheroot, of course, is one possibility. We know that where there is smoke there is fire. On the other hand, perhaps it could also be a small charade. It has nothing to do, as best we could find out, with a curette, unless you want to look at it in terms of what is going to happen to the health facilities.
Madam Speaker, when the Labor Party tabled its Bill in 1990 - it was then in opposition - calling on the Alliance Government to reopen the Royal Canberra Hospital, it proposed to the community that that could be done. The community was given to understand that that could be done. Time has passed and the Royal Canberra Hospital at Acton has closed. We know that. We also know that we must ensure that we do not see a softening in attitude towards the Acton site as far as community health facilities are concerned.
Madam Speaker, perhaps what I perceive here as the least bad scenario is a situation where the Australian Capital Territory Planning Authority has no idea of what the National Capital Planning Authority is doing. That in itself is bad enough. What may well be worse is that there is conflict between the National Capital Planning Authority and the ACT Planning Authority over this site and this is a way of undermining what the ACT Planning Authority is doing, what the Minister is doing, and what, clearly, is government policy, as stated in this house on a number of occasions. I will get to that shortly. Just what is going on in the National Capital Planning Authority that they can put out something like this, which actually undermines the intention of this house and the intention and understanding of the people of the ACT?
If they are going to put out a charrette, why not use the opportunity to come up with some very creative ideas that include the health facility? It seems to me that the concept was fine, but we need to ensure that that area is protected. On 1 February, in the Canberra Times, Rosemary Follett was reported as having said:
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