Page 1663 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 18 May 1994
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Jerrabomberra-Symonston Development
MS SZUTY: My question without notice is to the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning, Mr Wood. As a member of the Standing Committee on Planning, Development and Infrastructure, I was involved in that committee's extensive deliberations on the Territory Plan. It was my understanding from that process that any development in Jerrabomberra-Symonston would be similar in scale to that of Weston Creek. A discussion on page vii, of the introduction to the Territory Plan supports this view. In the light of recent reports on the Jerrabomberra study, can the Minister inform the Assembly whether the projected population and scale of development of Jerrabomberra-Symonston will be more like that of Gungahlin than that of Weston Creek?
MR WOOD: Madam Speaker, I am not in a position to answer that question because we are not examining that issue. I put out a media statement some months ago emphasising very strongly that the NCPA and the ACT Planning Authority together were running a concept idea, if you like. There is an international conference on planning in Melbourne later in the year, and the National Capital Planning Authority in particular thought it would be useful for some Australian example of planning to be there. For that reason we looked at Jerrabomberra, a place which one day, no doubt, will be developed but which at the moment is not on our books for development.
If you read very carefully the statement I put out, you will see the word "concept" about six times. I am not sure that every element of the media read that carefully enough, and there was for a little time a view that we were about to develop Jerrabomberra. That is not the case. The ideas competition, which is what this is about, is still running. I understand that a quite large number of people and groups around Australia have taken the documents out of interest, and they will prepare a concept for what Jerrabomberra might be like in the future. That is the level of discussions. I am certainly not looking into any detail. The ACT Planning Authority is running some workshops with people who will be impacted in the longer term, should development go ahead there. There have been two, three or four workshops at this stage, and that process will continue. It is a very useful exercise as that longer-term development occurs.
I should indicate further that the greatest factor on the development of Jerrabomberra is the presence of the naval station nearby. While I do not think the masts and their support structure extend into this area, I understand that there has been an expectation that we would not build there while that naval station stays in position because there could be interference with its signals. That is somewhere in the back of my mind as the inhibiting factor on any development there. Certainly, we do not expect that naval station to be out of its location until late this decade at the earliest. They are the factors behind some of the publicity of recent times.
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