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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3949 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

Environment Committee that we should take this more carefully. I would like to point out the unanimous recommendation of the committee-including the Labor member of the committee, who was quite happy to make a recommendation to her government that this was not the time to do this work.

At the macro level, this legislation is in many ways backward looking and a return to massive government involvement in land development. Mr Corbell, in seeking to return the ACT government to the role of land developer, simply harks back to the dark past and blatantly ignores the lessons and the losses of Labor's last sorry foray into land development back in 1994. Who could forget the debacle that was Harcourt Hill? This cost the taxpayers in excess of $20 million. A $20 million loss would be only a small drop in the ocean if the best-laid plans of Mr Corbell go wrong this time.

This government and this Assembly are in favour of a strategic planning framework, but this does not necessarily equate to the archaic paternalism of Big Brother that is being advocated by this minister. With the government, and presumably the minister himself, calling the shots, any joint venture arrangement, especially in terms of how they are managed, will be most interesting to observe indeed.

Then there is the little minefield to traverse of the planning and regulatory role of the authority versus its land developer role-two diverse and potentially conflicting hats to wear. This will be especially the case in the early months when there will still be other active developers operating in the ACT.

Let us be quite clear that we have to get strategic planning right. Future generations will judge us-and they will judge us very severely if we do not. It has to be the proper process and the proper sequence of events. I am not sure that this is the case with this legislation, and the government has not allowed adequate time for proper consideration and evaluation.

The cost to the ACT of getting strategic planning wrong is potentially horrendous, not only in dollar terms but also in social and environmental terms-not only for us here, but also for those who come after us. We are talking about decisions about the future-the long-term future of the ACT. Surely it behoves us to get it right-to get it exactly right. If this means that we have to take more time, I think that this place should take the advice of the committee that it commissioned to look at this legislation-and that advice was: do not do this in haste. There is too much at stake for us to run headlong and hope blindly that the detail will take care of itself. We have done this in the past and we have paid the price.

The most egregious example is the one that I spoke about yesterday, the outcome of the land act, which I have said here and in other places is a most inadequate and flawed piece of legislation. The haste with which a previous Assembly approached the land act and the price that we are still paying today reflect the same risk that we will probably take if we too hastily endorse this legislation.

The land act is probably the most inadequate and flawed piece of legislation that has ever passed any parliament. We have doctored it up along the way over the past 10 years, but we are chafing under its yoke.

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