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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 2 Hansard (6 March) . . Page.. 611 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Non-urban land is land outside the parts of the territory that have been potentially identified for future metropolitan growth-basically, areas where the city is not going to be. These areas were never anticipated to be studied in any detail as a result of the spatial planning process. They are in rural areas, they are in plantation areas and they were not anticipated to be part of the spatial planning process.

The process the Chief Minister has commissioned, whereby we will have a non-urban land study that looks at future uses-not in a development sense but in a future land use sense-of, say, plantation areas outside the immediate metropolitan area, rural lands, other reserve type lands and river corridors, and so on, Those are the terms of reference outlined in that study. That is the purpose of that piece of work, and it is now needed, given that that amount of land has been severely ravaged by the recent fire events.

The spatial plan will look at the potential metropolitan growth of the city-the physical aspect of how the city will grow. Obviously, that includes consideration of areas such as Stromlo. Stromlo will be considered in the context of the spatial plan, and PALM will also have management of the urban interface because that is essentially a metropolitan issue. That work will be done through PALM as well. The distinction is very clear.

We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to significantly change the way our city grows and develops in the future because of this fire event. (Extension of time granted). So, PALM will also be addressing the urban interface issues. These are very complex issues, and I do not think anyone could have anticipated the magnitude of the task before 18 January.

But the opportunity is there now for a once in a lifetime reassessment of the potential future use of this land. The decisions we take in the next 6 to 12 months will have an impact for the next 30 to 50 years, at a minimum, particularly on the potential alternative use of pine plantations, the re-establishment, if at all, of a pine plantation industry in the ACT and its establishment as an alternative to urban forest as part of the redevelopment of areas like Stromlo. These are all issues that have very long-term time frames.

The government has put the framework in place to address these issues. We are not going to be knee-jerk, and we are not going to be shallow in our assessment of these matters. They are complex, they are detailed and they will be done in a timely way. So the suggestion that the government does not have a strategy for responding to this and that people can have no confidence in the recovery-which is the assertion from Mr Smyth-is simply false.

I will now turn to some of the other issues in planning, in particular, bushfire-prone areas. There has been a lot of discussion of the assessment of bushfire-prone areas. It is important to note that the declaration of a bushfire-prone area does not mean the creation of new building standards; it means that the requirement for a higher level of building standard, as agreed under the Building Code of Australia, comes into effect for those suburbs.

A variety of graduations of the building standards are required, depending on the level of risk that is assessed. It is certainly possible for us to declare bushfire-prone areas in the

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