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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 3 Hansard (9 April) . . Page.. 751 ..

MS TUCKER (11.31): I would like to say a few words on this because, even though Ms Horodny has been dealing with the issue in her planning work, I have been contacted by a lot of my constituents about this whole development and the process which has occurred. I was glad to hear Mr Humphries say this morning that he is sure that there is total flexibility still available. It does seem a very back-to-front process, though. It is what happened in Ainslie, and it did not work there either. If you go out to the community and say, "Here are the proposals", even if you come and bring it to the Assembly, we have these five proposals. Basically, it is like the referendum that happened in Tasmania. The question was not "Do you want a dam?" but "Which dam do you want? This one, this one or this one?". Maybe people did not want any dams.

The feeling and the feedback I am getting from the people of Manuka is that the scale of this development is not what they want. They are not happy with the process. It was interesting that the child-care centre became involved just recently. The residents and people working in Manuka had not seen the drawings that were displayed. That just shows that you put them in a place which was not accessible. They had not been aware of them until quite recently.

Mr Humphries: It was in a shopfront.

MS TUCKER: It was in a court, I understand, upstairs. Is that not right?

Mr Humphries: No; it was downstairs.

MS TUCKER: Downstairs, but in a court?

Ms Horodny: No; it was upstairs.

MS TUCKER: The community are telling me that it was upstairs; you are saying that it was downstairs. They did not find it, upstairs or downstairs. They did not know, and they are business people who are working there. They were suddenly very alarmed to see the scale of this development.

What I am saying here is that, if Mr Humphries is giving this place an assurance that there is total flexibility, then I am sorry for the people that have gone to all the work to put in the expressions of interest, because they are not going to be very happy if suddenly this Government does actually listen to the community and says, "Really, the scale of this development is not wanted. It is inappropriate. So, go away with all of your expressions of interest. We are starting again. We are actually going to do something much smaller, because we can see how it is going to upset the whole balance of how Manuka works".

I was speaking at a function to one gentleman who works in planning and who said that there is always an anchor in a shopping centre. That anchor is often a supermarket. What it does is actually change the balance of how a place works. Obviously, if you have a development of the scale that is being mooted now, that anchor is likely to be shifted. Obviously, that is going to make a huge impact, not to mention the impact on all the other business areas in the district and the smaller shopping centres who are also extremely concerned. I have also been contacted by them. So, it is not just the people of Manuka

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