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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4078 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The arguments against the Manuka proposal itself have been debated in this Assembly before; so, I will just summarise them now. The size and nature of this shopping mall would greatly change the unique atmosphere of Manuka shops. The new shopping mall would be out of character with the existing old Canberra buildings in Manuka, and traffic around the shops would significantly increase. The child-care centre next to the car park would be affected, as it would be next to the fast food drive-through. If Woolworths opens a new store in the mall, the existing Woolworths store will close. This site then could also be redeveloped. The existing Woolworths site forms a major corner of the Manuka shops, and its value will obviously be increased by the Government's proposed enhancements to Palmerston Lane. Does this mean that another shopping mall will be proposed? The character of Manuka will be further impacted upon. A supermarket of this size would threaten the viability of other local shopping centres in Deakin, Griffith, Hughes, Kingston, Narrabundah, Red Hill and Yarralumla, and also Fyshwick Markets. The preliminary assessments admit that $7.1m of trade would be taken away, and we have had other figures in this evaluation which are even greater.

The Government is being hypocritical in promoting this expanded supermarket, which goes against its own retail policy to support the viability of local shopping centres, by setting up a retail battle in South Canberra between Woolworths and the local shopping centres. It is merely repeating the retail battle between the town centres and local shops that it attempted to stop through the ill-fated trading hours restrictions. I acknowledge that Morris Consolidated changed the design of the building from its original proposal in preparing its preliminary assessment; but it appears that this was done more to protect the commercial viability of the project than as any fundamental reassessment of its social value.

Of particular note is that the proposal has substantially increased the number of residential units and decreased the commercial and office space, because Morris realised that there was an oversupply of commercial space in Canberra. It is a pity that the Government, in pushing this proposal, has not acknowledged also that there is an oversupply of retail space. Once again, it is a very poor process. If there had been an opportunity for community input before the expressions of interest were called for - that is, in the development of the prospectus - there would have been an equal opportunity for all interested parties to come up with proposals on the changed prospectus.

What we are seeing now is that the person who was successful - the successful proponent from the expressions of interest - once in that position as the preferred proponent, has the opportunity to change it totally because of later input. Where is the justice in that for the people who spent a lot of time, money and energy putting in their expressions of interest? It is just another example of how the processes at the moment are not only frustrating the community but also frustrating the developers.

This motion, I hope, will allow some rational planning regarding the need for further retail space in Canberra to take place before the Government rushes ahead and approves this development or gets itself caught up in supporting the Bunda Street car park development in Civic or the possible expansion of the Canberra Centre. I believe that another version of that is on the cards as well. I want to point out that, in terms of Labor's position, I am particularly concerned about the inconsistency.

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