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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (12 March) . . Page.. 952 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

planning process for their area. They will then be able to participate, like members of other communities around the ACT have been able to, in the planning processes for their town centre.

This is a very important issue. Community facilities are an important part of the community focus. With such lack of attention, the people of West Belconnen are feeling left out of the planning processes across the rest of the city. In their minds, it is basically unfair.

I hope the Assembly will support this motion today. I commend it to the Assembly on behalf of the citizens of West Belconnen and Belconnen. I ask that the support be granted, for reasons of equity and because of the great need of the growing centre of West Belconnen and Kippax. I urge members, if they have not already done so, to go out and see the situation in Kippax, in order that they can fully appreciate the need for the community facilities, a permanent library and a master planning process for that area.

MR CORBELL (Minister for Health and Minister for Planning) (4.13): Mr Speaker, the government will not be supporting Ms Dundas's motion today. But it is very important to put on the record the government's approach to addressing the issues that Ms Dundas raised and that members of the West Belconnen community are raising in relation to Kippax and the West Belconnen community. It is equally important that I outline what steps the government is taking to address the issues and why we believe a master plan is not going to substantively address them.

In her motion, Ms Dundas asks the government to complete a master plan for Kippax by the end of next financial year and then to fix a firm date for beginning the construction of a permanent Kippax library and community facility. The government has already taken a number of steps to ensure that the community has its say in relation to Kippax and its role as the group centre for West Belconnen. One of the key steps it has taken has been to say that we are not going to pre-empt community discussion in relation to the future development of Kippax by releasing commercial land at Kippax which is available to be released at Kippax. That is a commitment I gave the Assembly last year, and it is a commitment that the government has stood by.

Since that time I and my colleague Mr Wood have put together a cross-department task force to put together to resolve the range of outstanding issues that have been presented through numerous reports on development and potential development at Kippax. These issues are long outstanding as a result of inaction over seven years by the previous Liberal government. Mrs Dunne can get on her high horse and speak with all the moral outrage she wishes about West Belconnen, but did the Liberals do in seven years to address these issues? Why did they not bother to respond to the last report of the Planning and Environment Committee? That is their record. That is the outcome after their seven long years-zero for the Kippax community. I am confident that this government will deliver tangible outcomes for Kippax in a much shorter time than the time in which the Liberals produced nothing.

The cross-government task force has sought to resolve the range of outstanding issues in relation to Kippax. In doing this work, the government has relied on the work done by the Department of Urban Services on the provision of public libraries across the city,

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