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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (6 December) . . Page.. 3729 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

I was very pleased to speak at a rally of Mawson and Phillip residents about a month ago down at the end of Power Street immediately adjacent to the land proposed for the land release. Over 200 people attended that rally, Mr Speaker, and you were also there. It is unfortunate that the minister was not there - he was somewhat conspicuous by his absence. Nevertheless, the overwhelming feeling of that meeting was that the residents wanted to have their say and put their case as to why they felt the land use designation should be reconsidered.

Planning is a public activity and if we want to ensure that residents have confidence in the planning process they have to have the capacity to participate in it when they feel that issues have not been properly addressed. That is certainly the case on this occasion. Residents have put forward a clear and coherent case as to why they believe this land is not appropriate for residential development.

Our support of a request for a review is consistent with the Labor Party's platform on planning and development. Labor's planning and development policy now explicitly states that we will undertake a review of all urban consolidation and dual occupancy development policies in the ACT. Mawson seemed an appropriate place to start.

I would anticipate, following the minister's letter that I received this morning, that the government will be supporting my motion. I would urge other members of the Assembly to do likewise simply because we have to make sure that these decisions are right and we have to make sure that residents' concerns are taken into account. Most importantly, we have to make sure that land release is driven in a strategic way, not purely in terms of gaining revenue from attractive parcels of land. That clearly is a very legitimate concern in the current public debate. Mr Speaker, I commend this motion to the Assembly and I urge other members to support it.

MS TUCKER (11.03): The Greens have examined closely the government's proposal to sell off land for housing in the Athllon Drive corridor in Mawson and we have reached the conclusion that we cannot support the proposal. I would like to explain how we arrived at this position, to counter any claims that the Greens are just being politically opportunist in opposing this development.

The Greens are very concerned about urban planning because cities have a major impact on our global environment. We are very aware of concerns about the environmental impact of suburban sprawl such as the loss of remnant bushland around the city fringe and the transport demands of far distant suburbs. We believe that over time there need to be changes to the way urban development occurs to make it ecologically sustainable. We accept that there are some areas of land around Canberra that have unclear land use purposes because the original decisions about these blocks have become out of date due to the changing nature of development around them.

It is also the case that there will be a growing demand to rejuvenate residential areas in the inner parts of Canberra as the existing housing ages. However, just increasing the overall density of housing in existing areas and infilling open space to address the problems of suburban sprawl generate their own environmental impact such as traffic congestion, loss of tree cover and loss of recreational amenity. What is needed is a more

targeted approach to urban renewal that takes into account Canberra's existing planning

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