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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 13 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

As Mr Moore rightly pointed out, there were only seven responses to the request for submissions. Given that we are talking about every small shopping centre in Canberra, we were a bit worried about this. We asked to see the mailing list for requests for submissions and we were kindly provided with that. As well, of course, the variation was advertised in the normal way. So, on the face of it, a very wide range of people should have been able to respond to this variation and to give their opinion.

On closer examination, though, it was clear that the shopping centre proprietors were not individually written to, nor were people in a few of the suburbs that might be more immediately affected written to or corresponded with directly. We felt that this was a major flaw, because the impact of this variation may well perturb some communities. I think of Cook, for instance, where there are a couple of empty shops that fill up now and again and empty now and again. The housing next to Cook is quite close to the shopping centre. Should something begin there which is noisy or out of kilter with what are the normal expectations from the shopping centre, we may well find down the track that those residents are not happy at all with this variation and could quite rightly say that they were never asked about it.

Of course, we have the clear argument that public ads were placed and the invitation was there; but experience has bruised us all in the past. There is one thing called "the Territory Plan and public consultation" and there is another thing called "reality when the change is on your doorstep and people may suddenly be caught out". That was what drove our comments back to the Minister. We felt that, given that we have a captive audience and that we know which of the shopping centres are in trouble, which of the shopping centres have empty shops and which of the shopping centres are likely to be changed, it was not difficult for the Planning Authority people to be selecting the ones that quite clearly could be changed under this variation. In that case, we felt that some further, more detailed work of this kind would better inform the Minister, better inform the committee and better inform the Assembly of the likely reaction to the change.

The other part that perturbed us about the report back to the committee in terms of the variation was the fact that there was other work going on in the Planning Authority in regard to the new ideas competition and in regard to the help caravan that is going around and working. The Government is assiduously working with the business community to try to come up with new policies for the management of shopping and retail outlets in the ACT. So, it was of great concern to us that there may be parallel activity going on already, such as the ideas competition - we have already seen artwork and displays of it - that was not being fed into the variation.

The variation to the Territory Plan that we were looking at, No. 64, included a range of things that all seemed plausible and logical; but we were not convinced that it included the full range of ideas that might have come up during the ideas competition. So, it seemed to us that a great deal of work had been going on - a lot of people had put time and effort into presenting ideas, into thinking about their local shopping centre, into thinking about what the Territory needs - yet that work was not being fed into the information that was given both to the committee and subsequently to the Minister. The intent of our statement today is not to offer disapproval, to negate the work that is being done, to stop it or to prevent it, but rather to foreshadow that the Minister does need a wider range of advice and information before this decision can be made.

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