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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (10 December) . . Page.. 4631 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

announced that there was going to be a combined strategic plan done between the Commonwealth and the ACT. At that point I said that it was appropriate for us in the Planning Committee to put our work on hold so that this could be developed in conjunction with the Commonwealth, because it was so critical. It seemed to me to be a perfectly good idea. I made quite supportive comments at the time, saying that this was the way to go.

I also said that this had to be done very carefully and not just with consultation but with participation of key players. It is not enough to say, "We have done our survey. We have seen what people said and we have made our decision. We were heading in that direction anyway". We need participation in the process. Since you have done that so badly, this Assembly will now become more involved in the participatory process, and we hope that we can assist you to get this right. At the moment you have got it wrong. It is yet another thing that you have got wrong this week. Although it is not referred to in this document, this week you are talking about perpetual leasehold. How important is planning when in the very same week you are getting rid of the Chief Planner? Canberra, the most renowned city in the world for planning, will be one of the few cities in the world that do not have a chief planner. We will get to that debate, Mr Speaker. I know that it is on the notice paper and I would not want to pre-empt debate on it.

I want to be quite specific about urban strategic planning. I have taken a great deal of interest in that particular aspect of strategic planning. I do not undermine the fact that you have dealt with ecological integrity and issues like that, all of which had to be dealt with. I think there is already broad agreement on them in this Assembly, although we will be looking for ways to enhance them. Indeed, later today, on behalf of the Planning and Environment Committee, I will be tabling a report about environmental accounting and how that can assist. (Extension of time granted) Urban strategic planning, as I have said on quite a number of occasions, requires three main principles - how much development, where and when. This does not offer that. It does not answer those fundamental questions. It is not a strategic plan. That is the difficulty and that is why I would distance myself from it. It gives me great anguish to have to distance myself from it. I share Mr Whitecross's view that strategic planning is a very important part of how we should be going.

If we had a majority government that was looking forward to many years in government in the ACT, as indeed one perhaps could argue that the Howard Government is in the Federal sphere, it might say, "We can do what we want, because we have a mandate to do so". The mandate here was for a genuine strategic plan that had the participation of all members of the Assembly. I think there was a far better method of doing it than that taken up by the Government. The Assembly Planning and Environment Committee was seeking a way to employ a consultant on a very short consultancy to assist us to write this up. When it was taken over by government, a new section was formed. Over the year I presume that salaries would have been of the order of $150,000.

Mr Speaker, that says something about a Chief Minister who went to the people promising them council-style government. Talk about the spin doctor! If anything ever made it clear about her being a spin doctor, that would have to be the best. If she had been genuine, she would have assigned those people to an Assembly committee to do it.

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