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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (13 November) . . Page.. 4081 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

A further argument was mounted about traffic generated by the development impacting on surrounding streets and intersections. It is apparent that the proposed development will bring additional vehicles into Manuka. The claimed impacts on existing streets and intersections, I think, take no account of their existing capacity nor of the proportion of the Manuka catchment that moves through the area to other centres on retail spending trips. The proposal, in fact, reduces traffic on Flinders Way in particular and provides the opportunity for increased access to car parking from Captain Cook Crescent - an appropriate local distributor road and one designed for that purpose. A range of traffic improvements and pedestrian safety measures are included as part of the proposal, and the traffic assessment of the proposal indicates that, on completion, all intersections surrounding the development will be operating at high levels of service.

Mr Speaker, another important consideration - a very significant argument, I think - was the economic impact on adjoining centres. This is obviously a matter which is difficult, and no-one denies that there will be an economic impact on those other centres. In some cases, it will be significant. The primary impact will be on supermarkets in the surrounding local centres, with other shops and restaurants in the area being affected, but to a lesser extent. This is an important point, Mr Speaker. One of the things which the PA drew out, which I think needs to be very carefully taken on board by the opponents, is that the identified impacts of the supermarket would be the same for a stand-alone supermarket with a small amount of retailing, which was the preferred position of the critics.

Ms McRae: That is the problem.

MR HUMPHRIES: That is the problem. As far as the development is concerned, all 51 people who made submissions said that they believe in some sort of development on that site, and so did the 700 who wrote to us. A very small proportion of people wanted no development whatsoever. If you had the more effective supermarket that we were talking about in the MBA proposal or in the Morris proposal or in some other variation between those two positions, you would have almost exactly the same impact on surrounding centres.

The fact is - and this is a matter that, I have to say, I regret - that national trends in retail are showing a continuing movement of customers away from the small local centres towards one-stop shopping at large multisection supermarkets. Mr Speaker, it is a matter of record that the ACT Government tried last year to shift that trend back towards local centres, and we met considerable consumer resistance in trying to move that trend back into local centres. We do not want to exacerbate that trend away from local centres; but we have to acknowledge that there are people who want to shop in local centres and there are others - often quite different sorts of people - who want to shop in group or town centres, where large facilities are available to them, with access to large car parking and other sorts of retailing opportunities of the kind which the Morris proposal will create at Manuka. You simply cannot pretend that you somehow protect those local centres' interests by unnecessarily restricting access to appropriate sorts of facilities of that latter kind.

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