Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

None . . Page.. 1465 ..

The Minister talked about the needs of families in Canberra. He foreshadowed a variation to the Territory Plan to enable families in need of urgent accommodation for relatives to obtain quick approval for a transportable unit for a limited time. These are really grassroots issues and the Minister has dealt with them in his statement, as he has dealt with the broader strategic and tactical issues that he, as Minister and as a member of this Government, has to deal with.

Mr Speaker, I come to the question that Mr Wood raised. The Minister made the statement that he was going to correct the mess left by the previous Government. There is no doubt that a very large percentage of this community believes that planning is a mess. There is a high level of dissatisfaction with planning. I submit that there is not so much dissatisfaction with what is said in the legislation and in the plan as dissatisfaction with the way that the legislation has been administered. The plan was put in place only a few short years ago and it was intended, for example, to provide certainty in the planning process. Yet, in practice today, there is no more certainty either for the citizen or for the developer - the person who is putting his money and his resources into these developments - than there was five years ago. There is huge dissatisfaction on the part of the people who are putting their money and their resources into developing Canberra further and an enormous amount of dissatisfaction in the community at large.

We only have to look at what has happened with Tuggeranong Homestead, the North Watson development and the North Duffy development, all of which have been abandoned or are about to be. This raises the question of who is responsible. The former Minister says that the Assembly approved everything. I have to assert that the Assembly did not approve everything. The former Government's fifty-fifty infill policy was a government policy. It had nothing to do with this Assembly. The Assembly did not approve it; the Assembly did not endorse it. It proved to be a bust. The community did not accept it, and there has been nothing but dissatisfaction with that aspect of the Government's implementation of the law and the plan. It is not a question of the Assembly approving or disapproving. It is a matter of the former Government having its own planning policies which it implemented under the umbrella of the law and under the umbrella of the plan and a matter of the implementation being awful. That is what the community thinks of it. It is appropriate that the Minister take action to correct that, and he intends to do so. He intends, for example, to eliminate the delays month after month in trying to get any works project through the Planning Authority and the leasehold system. It is unnecessary but it is a fact of life.

The only other matter that I want to deal with briefly is the way the Land and Planning Appeals Board is to operate. It was clearly not functioning under its former arrangements. Something has to be done. The Minister has indicated that he intends to rectify that. I can only say in conclusion, Mr Speaker, that I thoroughly support the Minister. Planning is a matter that has been of great personal concern to me for some years. I personally support the Minister's initiatives in everything that he is attempting to do in the interests of this community. He made a comprehensive and positive statement. I would have thought that the members of this Assembly would have got behind that and said, “Yes, we support you”. In my view, the Minister did not say anything that is reprehensible or that any member of this Assembly should not support. If they have any interest at all in the community's interest in this important subject, they should all support the Minister's statement and his initiative.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .