Page 4534 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 14 December 1993
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What of the National Capital Planning Authority's attitude to the stated aims of the ACT Government to provide health and community facilities on the site? The National Capital Planning Authority used its planning powers to effectively deny the ACT Government and the ACT community the planned hospice. The National Capital Planning Authority does not speak highly of the plans to tie the site in perpetuity to the provision of health services.
The latest idea proposed by the National Capital Planning Authority is to postulate that the Museum of Australia should be relocated from Yarramundi Reach to Acton Peninsula. The museum put forward a proposal which would have helped it generate the funds it needs to meet Federal Government requirements that for the long promised museum to be constructed it had to raise funds on its own behalf. After nearly 20 years of planning, the museum is being informed that it can build its housing, but only if it agrees to relocate from the site chosen in 1975 as the best location for the type of facility planned. The National Capital Planning Authority is yet to release its awaited discussion document on Acton-West Basin. This document will be the result of the urban design forums held in November 1993.
Members may well ask: Where has the ACT Planning Authority been during this process? There has been little or no defence of the ACT's right to determine the future of the site. What of the ACT Government's views? The Health Minister, Mr Berry, has stated that he will fight on for the location of a hospice on the site. In February 1992 the Government's health policy stated categorically that the chair of community medicine from the proposed clinical school would be located on Acton Peninsula. On 17 February 1993, during another matter of public importance debate on Acton, the Minister stated, in direct reference to the establishment of a clinical school on the site:
We cannot put the clinical medical school down on the Acton site. It is not going there. I make that position very clear.
The Minister for Planning, Mr Wood, said on 24 March this year, in answer to a question about consultation on the future of Acton Peninsula:
We express our views, and I am quite happy that in the end our views will be the ones that dominate because nothing happens there except as we determine.
On 1 April this year, in answer to another question about the consultation process, the Minister said:
They -
the National Capital Planning Authority -
do most of the running, and the ACT Government, through the Planning Authority, is a minor player ... the responsibility, legislatively, is with the National Capital Planning Authority ... we are limited in what may happen.
The Minister did go on to say that he was considering means by which the ACT Government can play a more dominant role, but we have heard no more since that time. Perhaps Mr Wood today will bring any developments in this area to the attention of the Assembly.
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