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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 1 Hansard (14 February) . . Page.. 172 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

limits on that, but it does not adequately address the fact that there is an inverse relationship between the extent of development and the quality of the landscape.

I do not believe that the area's heritage significance can be preserved by allowing dual occupancies. It is true that the area still would be relatively low density even if there were dual occupancies, but that is not the point. Once you introduce dual occupancies you have more buildings, more fences, more driveways, more hard surfaces, fewer trees and less vegetation. The original qualities of the area, the qualities that make it significant, would be changed permanently and detrimentally. It would be a pale shadow of the original garden suburb that was intended by Canberra's early planner. Extensions to the existing houses can have similar effects, but they are much more concentrated around the existing houses and less intrusive on the overall landscape setting.

As I mentioned in the earlier debate on this issue, the Greens would not support having a whole city of such large blocks and we do support urban consolidation in specific locations that contribute to the efficiency of this city's transport systems and urban infrastructure. However, this area is small relative to the rest of the city and maintaining these large blocks would not have a major impact on the overall planning of the city. The Greens also value the maintenance of our built and natural heritage and in this case we think the historic garden setting of this area is worthy of protection.

MR SMYTH (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Business, Tourism and the Arts and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (7.56): Mr Speaker, when the Assembly asks that a review be carried out, a review should be carried out. I met recently with representatives of the Old Red Hill precinct and they brought with them a dictionary, and the words of their dictionary definition that spring to mind are that you review something with the possibility of an outcome. I think we have to put everything in context.

We are hearing today that the definition of Simon Corbell and the Labor Party of a review is that you get the outcome that you desire. That is odd because some years ago we had a review or a consultancy on rural residential development and I was accused of tampering with the outcome there, but here we have Mr Corbell saying what the outcome of the review should be. You have to put that into context. His motion reads:

There are three elements to what was put there, not one. Three elements were put there: review the Territory Plan as it relates to variation 114 with a possible outcome. If you have a review, the review may have different outcomes to what was intended. If we go back to the original variation 114, the important points of it were that the review looked at how to protect the heritage of Old Red Hill and it looked at controls on subdivision, tree preservation, the hard surfacing and the plot ratio. The original review did not find that one house per block is intrinsic to the heritage character of the precinct.

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