Page 4384 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
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dominate or overstate some of the issues. That is something that Mr Lamont and I have to have in mind as we establish these local area planning groups. How do we get that representation from communities? We have to look at the whole, not the parts of it. Those parts are going to be there, certainly; but we have to look at the whole. I think that, without perhaps expecting it, Ms Szuty raised, for me, what is a very important point. Neighbourhoods are important in any community.
Let me tell you about the problems, sometimes, of neighbourhood involvement. We have tried very hard in our planning processes to involve the whole community, but it is not easy. I think I related a story here that until you come into someone's street, until you come right down to the backyard, it is hard to get people involved. I remember that ahead of the last election, and shortly after it, we worked hard in government to get PACTT as part of a body we could work with. We wanted them involved. They had done an effective lobbying job during that election campaign and we set up a process to keep them informed. If that group had developed, it would have been a very good point of contact; but it did not develop. It arose because some people, some parts, had very specific interests. It arose, but when those particular interests were dispensed with they did not care any more.
It is not necessarily easy to establish a neighbourhood and then to ensure that that neighbourhood carries on in a continuous fashion. Ms Szuty would know the number of groups that have flitted in and out of our consciousness. They come in and then they disappear. Neighbourhood groups are very much of that order. It is a challenge to us to see whether we can get neighbourhood groups up, and, even if there is no major or significant problem or issue in their area, to keep them on and see that they maintain their activity. It is important. It is no easy task for us, but I think it can be done. I do not claim at this stage to have all the answers.
Further to that, there are sectional interests to which we have to pay attention. Mr Stefaniak today seemed to be giving me a serve because I wanted to do that; I wanted genuinely, Mr Stefaniak, to attend to something that was happening, and I got a serve for it. It is incomprehensible. There is a whole range of groups around the ACT - environmental groups, social groups, welfare groups, sporting groups - that we deal with. I would not dare try to add up the number of advisory groups, committees, councils and the like that either the Government formally established as points of advice or are out there, without our initiation, providing that advice. There is a very large number of them, and we want that. That is good for us, and we get very good advice. I hope that you do not mind, Mr Stefaniak, if I go looking for it. But that advice sometimes has to be married to the whole picture. That advice can sometimes be in conflict with neighbourhoods, and the aim is, hopefully, to work those through; but those two different sorts of groups have to be accommodated. I do not think too much credit can be paid to the thousands of people in the ACT who do a great deal of work and provide their talent to help sporting, cultural and other bodies and to provide advice to the Government. They are a very important point of contact for us, and I do not think I could complete this debate without giving recognition to them. Those groups are also part of the ACT neighbourhood and they have to be accommodated in the range of thoughts that we find in this Territory.
MADAM SPEAKER: The debate has concluded.
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