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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 2 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 420 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

she was saying, "However, thanks to the Liberal Party's approach to planning, we have done very well."

Obviously, the Liberals had an approach to planning and it was something that they thought they were managing in the territory, so they had a notion of their role and a state planning notion was there for the Liberals. They did things like encourage development in the city by providing incentives and so on, so they did take a role in state planning. They were part of that notion, as was, interestingly enough, Mr Menzies in 1957 when the NCDC was first set up. Mr Menzies was able to see that Canberra was languishing in the way that it was and he took a role which saw coordination and strategy in terms of the development of Canberra as the nation's capital, so Mrs Dunne has taken a quite contradictory position in her matter of public importance today.

What we did see with the Liberal government was a tendency to let developers lead development. There was a lack of strategy and there was a lack of long-term planning which, basically, has resulted in their not being in government now. The community, having an understanding of the value of Canberra as a city which has been fortunate to have been carefully planned, became increasingly alarmed at the ad hoc, laissez-faire approach of the Liberals. The electoral result was quite clear in terms of what the community thought of their approach.

I am hoping to see from Mr Corbell and the Labor Party a long-term approach being taken to planning. Of course it has to involve community participation. It may, if handled properly, result in better standards. Mr Humphries was saying that we need to focus on the results of the two approaches. He focused on the Harcourt Hill project, which he saw as a failure of Labor. I have already explained that he was not quite fair in terms of how he described that venture, not that I think it was good what Labor did then, but I have explained the reasons for that already.

The results of the Liberal Party's approach to planning in Canberra and the developments that have occurred under them have been quite disappointing. We are still having buildings and houses being constructed in this city which are basically primitive in terms of the climate that we live in. We are still seeing developments where the actual sites and plots are not being used to take advantage of solar access or to take account of privacy issues. We have had developments where developers have jammed as many houses as they can on particular locations and issues are now coming out of that for the people who live there.

I do not think Mr Humphries should be inviting people to look too closely at the results of the two approaches, because the Liberal Party's approach produced a failure in terms of providing for any kind of sophisticated, modern built form in Canberra. That is why I am glad that we have had a change of government and have a minister who is interested in taking a longer-term approach. As I said, I am concerned about exactly what is meant by saying that we will have an independent planning authority. Policy stays with this place, as I have made quite clear. We will be watching that very carefully.

Mr Corbell: Yes, it does.

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