Page 242 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
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Territory Plan, and there is a very carefully established process once someone wants to change what is in the Territory Plan - the living Territory Plan, as has been said. There is a process and it was followed, and Ms Szuty's work on that committee was part of that process. That due process was very carefully detailed.
There are two points that are most significant, and I want to restate them. First, as Mr Lamont said, this is a commercial precinct and we should understand what is happening in that context. The other point mentioned by everybody, and it is a key to this debate, is the position of the car park. It was never a car park. It was used for parking cars after buildings had been knocked down, and it was used courtesy of J.B. Young's, or whoever owned the building across the road. After the site was sold by Young's, or whoever were the former owners, the department indicated very clearly that it wanted there a car park that was always going to be a car park. It indicated that by means of the letter I tabled the other day. Mr Willemsen did not contest the matter; he did not take it to the AAT or to the Supreme Court. He did not take it further. I understand that it was all amicably done; that is the report I have. He was prepared to do that, but it was important from the Government's point of view that car parking facilities be provided. We do it there, as we do elsewhere.
I will read into the record the paragraph Mr Moore and others have quoted from. I think it gives quite accurately the background to the way the plot ratio was finally decided. This letter is to the auctioneer, and I presume that the auctioneer read the letter out at the auction. It reads:
The Authority has seen the sketch designs prepared by Mr Colin Stewart ... for a residential redevelopment of the site incorporating a public carpark ... The scheme results in a plot ratio of approximately 1.25 to 1. The Authority considers that a development on the lines proposed in the sketches could meet the gazetted Policy provisions for the site.
That was extending that particular plan from 0.8 to 1.25. Let me then go to the last paragraph:
The information has, however, been given solely to assist the lessee and potential bidders at the auction. It does not in any way bind or commit the Department including the ACT Planning Authority in the determination of any future applications for Design and Siting or lease variation approvals.
The clear import of all this is that there is going to be a public car park. The density and other factors are there for consideration, for examination, for what always happens - discussion between the Planning Authority and the developer, and that is exactly what happened. The draft variation went out and the due process was followed. I think the due process, the majority decision of the PDI Committee, was entirely appropriate. There is nothing problematic about this. It is a process that has delivered us a car park, when there was no certainty of public car parking there in the past, and it has given us a residential development and maybe into the future a retail development that will be of benefit to Kingston and to Canberra.
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