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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2943 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

draft variation 200. She also said the community needs confidence in planning appeal rights, design quality and housing affordability. I would like to take the opportunity of this debate to respond to a couple of these issues.

First of all, in relation to tailoring DV200 to suit the circumstances of individual suburbs, draft variation 200 sets out a framework and it lays down the principle that residential redevelopment should be managed in a way that optimises outcomes for the local shopping centres and our transport infrastructure. In doing so, it provides protection for the garden city characteristics of our suburbs.

To provide a practical starting point for the expression of that principle, it sets down a template that designates those areas where high densities of redevelopment should be permitted. These are the 200-metre and 300-metre perimeters around local centres, group centres and town centres. The neighbourhood planning process is already gathering pace in several suburbs across the city, and more suburbs will be involved.

Draft variation 200 makes specific reference to neighbourhood planning. It says that the outline of the general residential areas around local centres, group centres and town centres can be tailored, through the neighbourhood planning process, to meet the specific circumstances of individual suburbs.

I acknowledge that 200 metres should not be applied arbitrarily, but it should respond to the circumstances of individual suburbs. The neighbourhood planning process is the process to make that happen, and the draft variation makes provision for neighbourhood planning to make that happen. So the government has established a clear mechanism in the draft variation to allow that area of higher density and greater redevelopment activity to be tailored to suit the circumstances of individual suburbs through the neighbourhood planning process.

Interim community reference panels have been established as part of the neighbourhood planning process to collaborate with Planning and Land Management in the drafting of the first six suburbs that are doing neighbour plans. The panels are examining precisely where these boundaries should go. The first meeting of the new panels was held last night. It was a very successful meeting at which members of the community discussed the issues we are talking about today.

Once a specific neighbourhood plan is developed, it will go through a public process of testing and, if necessary, will be developed as a formal variation to the Territory Plan, so it will have the capacity to reflect the particular circumstances of individual suburbs.

Ms Tucker also raised appeal rights. Draft variation 200 makes no change to appeal rights regarding development applications. Now, as previously, all decisions as set out in the land act and its regulations can be appealed to the AAT.

Although draft variation 200 makes no specific change by virtue of its effect, it does make one considerable improvement on the current regime of appeal rights. At the moment regulation prevents appeals on single dwelling houses. That stipulation currently remains. However, most complaints about that stipulation relate to the very large single dwellings that damage the amenity of residents in adjacent properties. DV200 seeks to limit the scope of large single dwelling redevelopment of a size which gives rise to such

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