Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (29 March) . . Page.. 1068 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

regard can have a major impact on neighbours. In fact, the one that I spoke about when I tabled this legislation was on the issue of height. The minor amendment almost took the height back to the one originally objected to, which would have had a significant impact on solar access. There is an issue here about the process being open. It is perfectly reasonable that it be open. If you want the community to have confidence in the planning laws in Canberra, you will support this proposal.

The other aspect of our legislation is about whether you should have to prove that you are going to be impacted upon substantially. The thing I find a little ironic about this argument is that you really cannot win in this town if you do not like a particular development. If you live next door and you object, you are called a nimby; you are described as a selfish person who only cares about his or her own backyard. The Government is saying today that it will not allow someone with broad community or public interests at heart to make a comment. You are going to get into trouble for that as well from this Government, whose approach is: "What business is it of yours?". The business of it is, as Mr Corbell said and, I think, Mr Moore said, that there are people who love this city and who do have a broader interest in what is happening in the development of this city.

There are organisations which spend a lot of time, quite often voluntarily, working to ensure that the integrity of our beautiful city is maintained and is not let go by a government that is a bit too keen to support the development lobby and a bit too concerned about not offending it. The point is that the developers can come into the ACT, make a lot of money and go, but we are left in this city with the result of that, so we want to see long-term concerns taken into consideration in planning. If you are living next door to a house which has been extended to the point where you have lost sun in your backyard, you will have to live with that for the rest of the time that you live in that property and the next person to buy it will have to live with it after that. It is just about being cautious and careful about how we allow development to occur. As I have already explained, we have people in the community who have broad public interests in mind when they make statements about development and we should support their ability to do so.

Mr Smyth puts out the line that there would be a big influx of appeals, everything would get clogged up and it would all be really worrying. I did put a question on notice about exactly how many appeals were lodged when we had a situation similar to the one I am trying to introduce now. The figures are very interesting. For the period from 1 January 1996 to 31 December 1996, 71 appeals were lodged by proponents, eight by organisations and 25 by individuals. We had a total of 104 appeals and 71 of them were from proponents. Twenty-one of the 25 individuals lived in the same suburb. For the period from 1 January 1997 to 31 December 1997 there were 77 appeals. The majority of the appeals, 48, were from proponents, nine were from organisations and 20 were from individuals, 18 of those 20 appeals being from the same suburb.

I do not believe that it is a true reflection of the situation where we had a greater availability of appeal mechanisms to say that we are going to have chaos in planning. It is really just about good planning and respecting the fact that people in the ACT do care

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .