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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (22 May) . . Page.. 1597 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

The fact is, Mr Speaker, that this is not a simple issue. We have a planned city and we need strategies in relation to these things. There is no doubt about that. Any simplistic formulation - whether we allow everybody to do what they like or whether we arbitrarily stop people from making decisions to expand - is not going to work. It is not going to be practical. We need to use the provisions of the planning Act to ensure that there is proper consideration - - -

Mr De Domenico: Do you support 24-hour trading, like Ms McRae, or don't you? What are your views on that?

MR SPEAKER: Order!

MR WHITECROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is appropriate that we go through these proper planning processes to consider the implications of these expansions and to consider where they fit into the overall scheme of things. That is necessary, obviously. But to adopt the proposition that Mrs Carnell was promoting - that we have to put obstacles in the way of the trading of town centre businesses in order to give the neighbourhood centres a fair go - is a nonsense. All businesses in the ACT, no matter what they are doing, have to operate on the basis that they - - -

Mr De Domenico: Tell us whether you support 24-hour trading, like Ms McRae does.

Mr Hird: Yes. What about the 24-hour trading?

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Whitecross has the floor.

MR WHITECROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Mr De Domenico: No answer.

MR SPEAKER: Interjections are not supposed to be answered.

MR WHITECROSS: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Mr Speaker, to support a proposition that it is the role of the Government to throw obstacles in the way of one set of businesses to allow another set of businesses a fair go or a chance to have a cut of the action is not a sensible proposition. Businesses have to appeal to customers. They have to get customers through the door on the basis that they are attractive to those customers. There is no point in being part of a planning process which allows businesses to open up in one place and which causes them to close somewhere else. That is also a nonsense proposition. So we have planning processes which get us to where we need to go.

Mr Speaker, this is not a motion that we ought to be supporting. It puts an arbitrary blockage in the way of the sensible processes that have been going on. We opposed the Liberals when they tried to adopt this approach in relation to the Tuggeranong Hyperdome. We oppose it now. There are proper planning processes to decide whether expansions are suitable and viable or not, and it is those processes that should be gone through, not arbitrary restrictions.

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