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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3985 ..

MS HORODNY (continuing):

not even know what the Territory Plan is. The planners cannot assume that, because there may have been some form of community consultation in the past about possible forms of development, this is sufficient for approving a specific development application now. It highlights the very problems I would have liked the committee to look into.

There are many types of land uses allowed in the community facilities zone, and Mr Moore has gone through the list. They include child care, hospitals, emergency services, churches, retirement complexes or, indeed, the very bushland that is there right at the moment - parkland, in fact. These have different types of impacts on neighbouring land uses and would invoke quite different reactions from neighbours, yet the Chisholm people have had no opportunity to comment on whether they want a church next to them as opposed to other community uses. The decision to allocate the site to the Canberra Revival Centre was made by the planners, with no input from the residents.

This case highlights for me the need to review the whole public consultation process for planning matters in this Territory. This case, and recent debacles over other redevelopments in Ainslie and Manuka and the sudden appearance of the futsal stadium on the foreshores of Lake Burley Griffin, indicate to me that the Government is out of touch with community feeling on planning and is prepared to ride over any complaints that may be raised.

I am disappointed that the rest of the committee was not prepared to recognise that the events surrounding the Chisholm church proposal were indicative of broader problems with the formal planning processes in the ACT, which need urgent attention. I asked the committee to inquire into this issue so that we could look at some sort of solution to this problem and other problems of this nature around the ACT, because they keep coming up. If these sorts of problems keep coming up, that indicates to me that there is something fundamental we need to go back and look at. I think it is a real shame that we have not looked at it. I would say that there will be more problems like this which will continue to come up and which the committee will be asked to investigate. It is not appropriate for the committee to keep looking at these sorts of proposals case by case, and it would have been very appropriate for us to have looked at the broader issues and the broader problems.

MS McRAE (3.46): One of the things I did not aspire to do when I came to the Assembly was to create anarchy. Despite all the noise I make in here and my disputation of the rules and the general disruption I cause now and again, I do have a great deal of respect for the rules of the Assembly and for the rules governing the way we run our committees and the way we legislate and make law. Ms Horodny's claims are completely out of line. We could not have heard the residents. We did not have an inquiry before us. We explained this to Ms Horodny. We were being briefed by officials, as is our right as a committee. We must ensure that we have not somehow missed a piece of information and therefore become anarchist by default.

It was never my aspiration to disrupt the proper process that was going on, and I agreed to the committee being briefed by officials, and in public, so that there would be no question of some secret backdoor briefing to shut us up. The briefing was given in good faith, and then we were gazumped a couple of days before the committee hearing.

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