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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1066 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

to influence those outcomes. Planning is a public activity. It is perhaps one of the most important of all public activities a government undertakes. Important principles of urban governance require that our processes in relation to land management and therefore development applications be democratic and provide for people to have a clear and open say on what occurs in the urban area in which they live. This is not a radical change, but it is a change which will give that opportunity to those individuals who are currently excluded from the capacity to make a comment and to object to something if it does impinge on their amenity.

We are seeing right round Australia a reaction against governments which have advocated proposals that have restricted and downgraded the community's capacity to influence the decisions that affect the shape and nature of their cities. This legislation is a small step towards trying to redress the balance. It would be unwise of members of this Government and others who choose not to support this legislation today to downplay the significance of the reaction against the loss of community control on planning legislation and the shape and nature of our cities. This legislation - certainly from our analysis of it; I should stress that I have spoken with representatives of industry as well as, obviously, people who are directly concerned with seeing this type of process put into place - does provide for a very important step towards allowing people to regain control of the shape and nature of the suburb or the area in which they live; so we will be supporting the legislation in total.

The other point I wish to make is in relation to clause 5 of the legislation, which is about a very important principle that, again, goes to the very heart of saying that people should have the capacity to influence the shape and nature of their areas. By removing the words "substantially and adversely affected by a decision", we are allowing for what is generally called open standing. I do not subscribe to the view that, just because you do not live immediately next door to a development, you have no interest in it. That is, I think, a fundamentally flawed view of the world because it tries to compartmentalise people and divide them into areas by saying, "If you live in this part of the city, you have no interest in what happens in this other part of the city".

As I said before, planning is a public activity. We are all citizens of this city. We all have an interest in what occurs in this city. To compartmentalise people and say that they can comment on certain things but not on others is really to undermine a citizen's fundamental democratic right to be able to have a say and influence the direction that their city takes. It may appear on the surface to be a small change, but it has significant implications which go to the heart of the sort of philosophy you bring to the planning debate.

I do not accept the arguments that this change would lead to a clogging up of the appeal system. I do not accept the arguments that it would lead to a situation where the legislation and the appeals mechanism would be unworkable. If this parliament decides that this is the most appropriate way of allowing people to have their say in relation to development applications, it is incumbent upon the Government to make sure that it is properly resourced. I do not accept for a moment the argument that we are going to have PALM officers spending more time on these sorts of issues, appeal issues, than on

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