Page 234 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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As was stated by Mr Lamont on Tuesday, before the lease was offered at auction in May 1992 the Department of the Environment, Land and Planning entered into negotiations with the vendor's agents and agreed that prospective bidders would be advised that in any redevelopment of the site a public car park of at least 70 spaces would be required in addition to any parking provision generated by the new development. The question can be asked: Why did the department do this, in the face of the gazetted planning objectives requiring not 70 but around 160 spaces? The Planning Authority says that it was because, if the department had not done so, the land could have been redeveloped solely for residential purposes, without any public parking at all. This was a monumental error on the department's part. It ignored the requirement for a change of the purpose of the lease which gave adequate control to see that any development met the clear intention of the planning objectives that public parking be included.
This action of the department is objectionable for another reason. The department agreed to a significant departure from the gazetted policy objectives by private negotiation, without any due process and with no public consultation whatsoever. This is a major ground for the Assembly disallowing this draft variation. We should make it clear to the department that we will not condone departures such as this from the clear intentions and objectives of the planning legislation. Not to do so would encourage the department and the Planning Authority to repeat the process whenever they felt like it.
Let us now turn to the position of the developer. It is recommended that, should the variation be approved and the major departures from the normal standards of building height, site coverage, plot ratio, open space and setbacks be waived, the developer is required to provide some public parking at his expense. The developer purchased the lease at auction with the current planning policy objectives in place, with the existing standards of building height, et cetera, in place, and on notice that he would be obliged to provide at least 70 public car parking spaces additional to those required to meet the demand generated by the development. The developer can have no cause for complaint if he is left to conform to the existing planning objectives and standards. That is precisely what he purchased at the auction. Indeed, if the variation is allowed to stand, the value of his purchase will be markedly enhanced. Both the vendor and other bidders or potential bidders will have a legitimate complaint, and so would the public.
How would this enhancement have come about? In its report to the ACT Executive on the issues raised in the public consultation process, the ACT Planning Authority says that the revised proposal results from extensive negotiations between the lessee and the Authority. Exploratory discussions between a developer and the Planning Authority are no doubt necessary, but what has really happened here? From its consistent support of the developer's proposals - both the original and the revised ones - and from its consistent and total dismissal of any public objections whatever, it is clear that at the conclusion of its negotiations with the developer the authority was totally committed to a development proposal which did not meet the policy objectives and which involved major departures from existing standards.
If there is no open-mindedness on the part of the Planning Authority when the public consultation process commences - and demonstrably there was not in this case - then the public consultation process, a fundamental principle of the planning legislation, becomes a useless farce. This is another major ground for the Assembly disallowing the variation. The Assembly should let the ACT Planning Authority know that its role is not to treat the Territory Plan and
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