Page 4196 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 29 November 1994
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Canberra is a place like no other. It is a planned city. People here have enormous expectations that government will deliver what they want. So, it is the responsibility of government to find out what it is that the people want and to make sure that they are not acting contrary to those wishes. I suppose that in many ways it is a question of planning. Canberra has grown up with the notion that the plan provides that there will be three levels of shopping centres. There will be the local shopping centres down at the corner of the street, there will be the group centres, and there will be the big town centres. Those expectations remain. In fact, much of what has been said about the deficiencies in the Territory Plan in the last few weeks, if you simmer it down, comes down to that - the amenity of the local suburb, and that includes the shopping centre. People have those expectations because it is a matter of convenience for them. They want to be able to hop down to the corner store on a Sunday afternoon and buy something if they need it quickly; but they also want to be able to drive down to the big centres where they can do other types of shopping at their leisure, when they have the time to do it. So, there is this real expectation. People want access to a wide range of shopping facilities, some nearby and some a little more remote.
Madam Speaker, I was reminded of something in the early part of the debate when the Chief Minister and others were talking about the new industrial park and the like. The minute you talk about new development, there suddenly appears a legless lizard or a wingless moth or a mouthless moth, or something. Gungahlin Town Centre was stopped because of it, and the Planning Committee was concerned about the new industrial park; but when you want one in Tuggeranong you cannot find a single one. I wonder, on some occasions, whether these are rare animals or insects, because there seem to be so many of them. On the other hand, when you really want one there is not one to be found.
The thing that disturbs me about the debate so far, Madam Speaker, is that there seems to be evolving an argument between small business and big business. I think we need to make the point that we need both. I think it needs to be said that without big business the Tuggeranong Hyperdome, for example, would not be there. It was not small business that built the Tuggeranong Hyperdome. When we get into a debate about which shopping centres should expand and which ones should not, we should not allow ourselves to be drawn into a debate about whether we need small business or big business; we obviously need both. But, of course, we have to have a balance between them, because that is what the public expects. They do not want to see the big shopping centres grow to such an extent that the small local shopping centres are forced to close down; nor do they want only small shopping centres, only to discover that when they want to go shopping on a larger scale there is no larger shopping centre there. We have to strike the balance.
How does one strike the balance? The balance can be struck only by government exercising its prerogative and its discretion about what gets done where, and I have come back to the point that this is a planned city. It is not like any other city. It is a city where government decision affects everything. This Government has no compunction whatsoever about making a major decision that is forcing petrol station owners into bankruptcy. Why do they have a problem with the notion that they should exercise their discretion and their judgment about a decision as to whether the Hyperdome should expand? It should not present any problem at all to them.
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