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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2206 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

There are some questions also about the whole issue of the Government's faith in their own Planning Authority and their own processes of lease and land management that have been through a major shake-up and a major change just recently. I would have thought that, with the Government's confidence in their own processes, they would allow them to operate; or does this Government not have faith in its public servants to deal with these issues, when I have just heard speaker after speaker say how competently the officials have dealt with this particular set of issues until now? Some of these issues were touched on very briefly in an editorial in the Canberra Times earlier in the week. I thought it was very fair of them to publish the response from Mr De Domenico; they gave him a very fair run to present the alternative view. If I ever have a problem, they say to me, "Well, write a letter to the editor and we will publish it, provided you restrict it to 250 words". To be fair to them, they published both of the ones that I have written under those circumstances. The issues raised in that editorial, I believe, have not been answered adequately. I do not believe they have been answered adequately by the Minister either in that article or in this Assembly.

Then there is the issue of authorities. In the end, are we going to be governed by authorities? We have authorities popping up all over the place. We have this Government rejecting recommendations delivered to them that say, "Yes; you should have a separate statutory planning authority and a separate land management authority". But then they deliver almost exactly the same thing for Gungahlin. There are some ironies there. At the same time as they are rejecting those we get a Health Authority, a Gungahlin Development Authority - I cannot remember all of them - and a couple of others. The TAB looks to me as though it is dressed up effectively as an authority. We will have authorities all over the place. I think there are real issues in that.

Then there are questions in this legislation that we also have not had the appropriate time to address. Let us not forget that, at the same time as we are dealing with this legislation, members are dealing with a whole series of other matters, which is why it is very unusual to have legislation brought in one week and then dealt with the following week. I have certainly been involved, with the Planning and Environment Committee, in preparing a statement and two reports, or bringing them to conclusions, in that same period. This is not a time when members are just sitting around doing nothing.

Then we have to deal with the issues. I will just use a couple of examples. Clause 4 deals with the development area. It states that the Minister may, by instrument published in the Gazette, "declare an area specified in the instrument, being an area that is within the Gungahlin Central Area, as the Gungahlin Development Area". There is a fair bit of speculation as to what pieces of land this authority has control over. By and large, it is set out by the Minister in the Gazette. Let me raise a specific example that is raised. Will that include the development of the college that is designated in the Territory Plan to be right next to the town centre? Will it be this authority that actually designs and develops this particular college? What kind of influence will the Department of Education have in terms of the sort of college that we might need there? These are planning issues. That is just a small issue which I think illustrates that we have yet to deal with each of these sorts of issues in detail. Then we have to deal with the broader planning issues. Ms Tucker raised the issue of light rail. That is a very important issue for Gungahlin.

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