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

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 409 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

Those of us who are privileged to call Canberra home cherish this place in a way that those from elsewhere cannot fully understand. There is a sense of pride and ownership which is truly profound. It is a truism that this is a most planning-conscious city. Indeed, it has been said that town planning is harder to practise here than anywhere else because it is home to some 300,000 town planners, each with a view and an argument to expound, often at length.

Indeed, it is one of the irrefutable strengths of our community and stands as a robust pillar of the remarkably high level of civil society and social cohesion that we enjoy here that each of us can partake in the discussions on town planning. Yet what I hear from Mr Corbell makes me very concerned. In an age characterised by governments almost everywhere recognising that some of the things that governments have done in the past have not all been appropriate to governance, Mr Corbell appears to be swimming against the tide of history by seeking to reintroduce state planning on a large scale.

Many people in the ACT still remember the days when state planning ruled here. We had, I thought, moved on. In the guise of advocating a strategic whole-of-government approach, Mr Corbell sounds fairly Whitlamesque, especially when he says, as he did in this place in December, that "no aspect of long-term planning direction will be left untouched". No aspect will be left untouched; those were his words. I ask honourable members to think about that and be very afraid. This is the Labor Party's brave new world, a socially engineered world, revisited. The heavy, stultifying hand of state planning which Mr Corbell appears to favour strikes me as more than a little anachronistic for a Canberra whose private sector engine room is vibrant and dynamic, a legacy of the former government.

I do not stand here to claim that the former government got everything right in terms of planning or anything else, but it did create in planning a decision-making process that included the most consultative and open approach taken by any jurisdiction in Australia. The government worked to overhaul planning legislation by streamlining processes and making it more accessible and equitable. These were very real achievements and were driven by a vision that urban and land use planning should make the greatest possible contribution to a high-quality lifestyle in Canberra and provide reference points against which proposals for land use could be assessed.

As I said, our approach was not perfect, but it was responsive and it was progressive. Mr Corbell, as the Minister for Planning, is seeking to return the ACT government to the role of land developer, which flies in the face of this approach and blatantly ignores the lessons and the losses of the Labor Party's sorry foray into land development in 1994.

Having said that, and I do not want Mr Corbell to be too surprised by what I am about to say, there are some elements of what he has foreshadowed that I welcome. I certainly agree with him when he argues, as he did in December, that we should all think strategically about planning. I think we should all think strategically about everything we do. I also agree that it is time to challenge the community, the professions and MLAs about contemporary planning practices and the way the Assembly plays a role in that regard.

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