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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 5 (Hansard) 16 May) . . Page.. 1393 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

I am advised, Mr Speaker, that there are over 1,159 trucks of over 12 tonnes registered in the ACT. I am also advised that ACT registered trucks of over 12 tonnes parked in residential areas number 600. They are the ones that are registered in the ACT. There are others domiciled here that are registered in the Northern Territory, or that have national registration because of national rules. So one could take perhaps another couple of hundred. Let us say, being conservative, as I am from time to time, that we need to build truck parks for 800 trucks. That, on my calculation, would cost us close to $20m. I would also ask Ms Horodny to tell me from where she would expect the community to find the $20m in order to build concrete-paved, secure truck parks. I would be very interested in knowing where the Greens would enable us to find that.

Mr Speaker, in summary and in conclusion, we have attempted to fix a problem as best we can, taking into account the views of as many people as possible, without, as Mr Whitecross correctly says, going in with a sledge-hammer and blanket banning everything that moves. The Government has taken on board holus-bolus, as I said, the recommendations of the working party. One person in that working party, who tends to change his mind from time to time, has agreed to everything but two areas of the deliberations of that working party.

Ms Horodny also suggested that we have done nothing at all. Ms Horodny would know that at the moment you can park a truck close to your neighbour's boundary. Under the new rule it cannot be within 1.5 metres of the fence and the set-back has to be 6 metres from the front of the block. Now you can park your truck on the footpath or on the nature strip, but under the new guidelines you cannot. It is an offence to do that. You cannot park it within 1.5 metres of the fence of any neighbour. In certain circumstances you also have to provide a clean and landscaped area before you can park your truck.

I suggest that Ms Horodny should read the advice and should have listened to the advice given by the bureaucrats. There will be registration of all trucks that need to be parked in residential sites. Audits will be done without complaints necessarily coming from neighbours, and those audits will be done not just by people in the motor traffic area but also by people from the Planning Authority. As I said at the beginning, Mr Speaker, this is not an issue involving t just the Department of Urban Services; it is a complex issue also involving people in the Planning Authority.

Mr Speaker, okay; we might not have a perfect solution that suits all, especially members of this Assembly, I might say. I would welcome input, as long as it is rational and realistic, from any member of this Assembly, and I look forward to the debate when we present the legislation. I urge members, before they make up their minds, as people have tended to do after five minutes, to wait and see what the Government's legislation says when it comes into the house, instead of bagging things willy-nilly. As I said, I commend the statement to the house.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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