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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (4 December) . . Page.. 4618 ..

MR MOORE: Pursuant to standing order 246A, I wish to inform the Assembly that on 27 November 1997 the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment agreed that the following statement on the committee's inquiry into proposals for the John Dedman Parkway be made. Before I begin the statement I would like to comment, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, that today we are seeing very good use made of standing order 246A, which I think has been a great enhancement to the standing orders and the ability of committees to operate in this Assembly.

I make this statement on behalf of the Standing Committee on Planning and Environment. Our reason for making the statement is to put on the record our assessment of where the inquiry is up to and what should happen next. In doing so, we are conscious that the Third Assembly is about to end and that a new planning committee, however structured and whatever it is called, will be established by members of the Assembly to be elected on 21 February next year. We think it should be a high priority for those members to take up the John Dedman Parkway inquiry where we left off.

In this regard, we recommend that the full records of our committee, including written submissions and supplementary material, along with the transcript of public hearings, be made available to that committee. We note that a resolution to this effect was passed at the start of the Third Assembly and we consider it is essential to do the same at the start of the Fourth Assembly. We have so far received 57 submissions and we understand that there are many more people who wish to lodge written material. Also, we know that a great number of people wish to be heard when public hearings are resumed.

Unfortunately, the end of the Third Assembly has meant that our committee could not organise to hear all of the people affected by the John Dedman Parkway proposal. The best we could do was to hold a public hearing on Friday, 21 November 1997, to hear a representative of Maunsell Pty Ltd, which conducted the preliminary assessment, the Conservation Council, the Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning and government officials. The hearing was extremely useful. We would like to thank Maunsell Pty Ltd, the Conservation Council and the Minister for appearing before us at particularly short notice. I know that Mr Humphries had to make quite a number of rearrangements in order to facilitate that.

We carefully noted the Minister's announcement at that public hearing about two important matters. The first is that he has decided that a full EIS is not required in relation to a future route for the John Dedman Parkway at this time. The second is that he has asked officials to prepare a draft variation to the Territory Plan to do two things: Firstly, to reserve the route identified as Option 3 in the Maunsell study as a transport corridor in the Territory Plan. This is the route that runs from the Barton Highway at its intersection with the new Gungahlin Drive, rises onto O'Connor Ridge and runs to the east of the AIS - the Australian Institute of Sport - to then split into two branches, one to join Caswell Drive at Aranda and one to join Barry Drive in O'Connor. Secondly, the draft variation will provide for the deletion of the existing road reservation to the west of the AIS and, in the Minister's view, thus permit development of that area of the Bruce precinct.

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