Page 1926 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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Planning Authority are currently finalising a joint discussion document on the future of the Acton-West Basin area. It is due to be released next month. However, we have heard that the NCPA has already outlined its vision for the site as follows:
... a vibrant residential waterside precinct, also integrating cultural and commercial uses.
and:
... a mixed-user development project creat(ing) an active urban edge around the rim of the basin "where the city meets the Lake" involving residential, retail, commercial, cultural and community uses. In addition, the NCPA would like to see a major cultural institution and community use on the tip of Acton Peninsula.
I quote from a document that has been sent to many university planning and design schools across the country as part of a design competition. Students and their lecturers and teachers will design buildings and landscape features for the site, and the competition entries will be reviewed in October this year. The NCPA stresses that this is not a competition where a winning entry will be selected and that design necessarily adopted, but has said:
It is the hope of the promoters that the participating schools will challenge and inspire current directions in urban design and planning in Canberra.
The Canberra community and we, as representatives of the community, are entitled to ask, "What is going on here?". I do not deny that this is a wonderful opportunity for students to do conceptual work on proposals for large-scale development, but what is driving this competition? The people of Canberra have already stated very clearly what they want for Acton Peninsula: They want health and community related services to replace Royal Canberra Hospital. As Mr Moore has said again, the ACT Government has given us a commitment in this chamber that there will be health services located on Acton Peninsula. But there is no mention of these in the competition outline. Commercial, residential and community uses are the only ones mentioned in the competition outline.
It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that the ACT Government needs to have someone in there fighting for the ACT residents' point of view to be heard. In June we were told, not by the planners but by a Canberra Times reporter, that only one building on the site was identified for potential use in housing non-acute health services - the old isolation ward. To quote from that article:
None of the site uses discussed: a nursing home, rehabilitation and aged care services, a convalescent unit, a hospice, a relocated Queen Elizabeth II Home for Mothers and Babies, or community health facilities, target the tower block for refurbishment.
Several other Canberra Times articles which have some bearing on this debate have been brought to my attention. Firstly, "Health-related activities preferred at Acton", said the Canberra Times of 10 January 1991. Interestingly, the article referred to a November 1990 news conference that never was on the study of West Basin and Acton Peninsula. Other articles appeared in the Canberra Times on 1 and 2 December 1990, outlining the positions of the Residents Rally and the
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