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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3682 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

I want to place on record my appreciation for the way they have handled it. I think they have done it very well. I think that is something we need to continue.

You cannot reverse the march of history, I suppose, even though it is only in relation to two local shops. If people are not going to patronise those local shops, nothing we can do-and we have tried-is going to change that. We do not want a whole lot of derelict buildings there for vandals to wreck and destroy and cause problems in the local area. If we delay this any further we are not doing the right thing by the suburbs that are affected. We are not doing the right thing by the people at Kaleen or the people at Giralang.

MR KAINE (8.37): At this stage in this debate I am not convinced either of the merit of what Ms Tucker is putting forward or of the opposing position being taken by the government. We are talking about local shopping centres, but I notice that Ms Tucker's motion draws a comparison between residential development on commercial land in local and group centres and multi-unit development in residential areas.

I do not know what the differences are but, on the face of it, there are differences, and Ms Tucker is saying that there ought not be. I think what she is saying is that those rules that apply on multi-unit development in residential areas ought to equally apply on commercial land in local and group centres. I think that is the sense of what she is saying. There appears to me to be some logic in that.

Mr Stefaniak just pointed out the problems of maintaining the viability of small shopping centres. This is not a new problem. It has been on the agenda for years and we have struggled with how to maintain these small local shopping centres. There have been all sorts of proposals put forward. Some of them work and some of them do not. I am not too certain that we can make a standard rule that applies to all local shopping centres anyway. There is a big difference, for example, between the Aranda shopping centre and the Macgregor shopping centre. They are two totally different propositions. What might satisfactorily apply in terms of building density and the like in one would be totally inappropriate in another. I suppose it comes down to whether or not the people who live near the small local shopping centres want to maintain the shopping centre.

I had complaints about the density of the proposed redevelopment of Aranda. I used to live 200 metres from the Aranda shopping centre. It is only about three shops anyway and there are enough car parks there for about 12 or 14 cars. So there is not much scope for changing the density because if you boost the density of the buildings you immediately run out of car parking space.

The question is how many of those people who live near the Aranda shopping centre shop there anyway? My guess is that most of them go to Jamison or somewhere else. The range of shops at Aranda is so small that there is not much attraction. One might argue that the Aranda shopping centre is one that is past its use by date. There might be the odd person who says, "I live next door and I duck into the shop," but I am not clear on how much custom they get.

It is a vexed question. The Minister for Urban Services might explain why there is this different set of rules for commercial land in the local shopping centres and multi-unit developments in residential areas. Why does the government implement different

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