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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 2 Hansard (11 March) . . Page.. 606 ..

MS TUCKER

The paper admits that rural residential development in the ACT would be a new policy direction, but there is no discussion of what is wrong with the old policy of excluding this development, apart from the fact that the Government thinks that we are missing the opportunity of attracting here a few people who may be thinking of buying a rural property in surrounding New South Wales. There is certainly no discussion from a planning perspective of why the existing policy needs to be changed. It is of concern when you see political decisions made in a planning void. The Government needs to provide stronger justification for the change in policy.

Turning to the financial aspects of the report, the executive summary makes general references to the financial considerations that need to be taken into account, but the financial discussion in the body of the report makes clear that there would be a significant financial loss to the Government if it proceeded with rural residential development in areas that could have been used for standard residential blocks. Professor Max Neutze of the ANU has calculated from the figures provided in the study that there would be a government subsidy of between $14,000 and $31,000 per rural residential block. I find it amazing that, on the one hand, the Government is talking about the ACT's major budgetary problems yet, on the other, is prepared to accept a significant cost for the development of a relatively small number of rural residential blocks in the ACT. It should also be noted that the paper admits that these costs may be understated as it did not analyse the costs that would be imposed on future generations. That is a major oversight.

The paper noted that the low density of rural residential development means that there would be a lot of "dead running" in road travel and infrastructure services which could impose significant ongoing costs on the future community. It should be noted that these costs are all the more likely as the paper proposes that the blocks should be fully serviced, whereas in other rural residential developments many of the services, such as water and sewerage, are provided on site. In addition, rural residential areas would be too low density to justify local services, such as shops and schools, so the residents would have to travel elsewhere for these services. However, there is no analysis in the paper of the social impacts of this type of development and how they would be managed.

On the topic of infrastructure services, the paper makes no mention of whether ACTEW was consulted in the preparation of the paper. I do find it amazing that the paper recommends that the blocks be fully serviced and yet the organisation that most probably would provide the water, sewerage and electricity transmission services was not asked about whether that would be feasible and what the costs would be. I also note that there is no mention of how waste collection from these rural residential areas would be provided and what the cost would be. There is also no indication of what increased costs may arise from the increased fire services that would be needed in these areas, as I am sure that whoever moved into these areas would want their houses protected from fire.

Regarding the environmental management of rural residential development, I am concerned that the paper places more emphasis on the visual aesthetics and infrastructure requirements of rural residential development than on the environmental impacts of such development. The paper notes that much of the area identified for rural residential development contains yellow box and red gum grassy woodland, which is a declared endangered ecological community, but does not address how the conservation of these areas would be achieved. I am very concerned that, given the proposed block sizes are

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