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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 1968 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Those two sites, Mr Speaker, were sites that had been assessed by the Government's so-called independent study.

MR SPEAKER: Order! There is far too much audible conversation. Mr Corbell has the call.

MR CORBELL: It is interesting to note that the very same day that the Government announced the release of those two sites, Mr Osborne made the very clear and sensible comment, "Yes, but one of these sites is for a prison and how can you propose rural residential development on a site that could be used for a prison? Surely you should have waited". That would have been a sensible approach. Any reasonable planner would have said to the Government, "Look, you have a couple of differing priorities here. We have to work that out before we make a decision"; but no, the Government bulldozed ahead, as they have done on this issue consistently.

It was interesting to hear Mr Smyth on radio about a month ago when he said he did not think a prison and rural residential development were inconsistent at all. He thought you could quite happily have a maximum security prison in the middle of a rural residential estate. Perhaps Mr Smyth should have talked to the Office of Asset Management, which has to sell the land, before he made those comments, because I am sure that is going to be a big selling point for the rural residential estate - "Come and live next door to a maximum security prison". Unfortunately, Mr Speaker, that farcical situation, not of anyone else's making, only of the Government's making, highlights the reason why there has to be a properly considered examination of rural residential development in the ACT.

Mr Speaker, the points that I am proposing the Standing Committee on Urban Services look at in relation to rural residential are outlined in my motion. I would like to speak to each of those briefly. The first relates to implications for the future metropolitan development of Canberra. Anyone who has any simple understanding of the future metropolitan growth of our city would understand that any proposed future metropolitan growth beyond our existing borders has always been proposed to be to the north, towards Yass and towards Gundaroo.

Hall/Kinlyside is a large area of land within the ACT's borders that has always been allocated for some form of residential use. Is it sensible, Mr Speaker, to put a rural residential estate at what may not be the urban edge in 50 years' time? It may, in fact, be closer to the metropolitan centre of the city, with the city structure continuing to extend beyond the Territory's borders, which in the long term would seem almost inevitable.

The fact that the Government is proposing what is widely recognised as a highly inefficient use of land for residential purposes, rural residential development, in an area which could be a fundamental part of the corridor in which the metropolitan structure of Canberra will continue to develop is fundamentally flawed and deserves proper investigation. It deserves proper investigation because the Government has not addressed it at all in any of its examinations or in any of the information that is provided to this place.

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