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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2739 ..

Question resolved in the affirmative, with the concurrence of an absolute majority.

Territory Plan-variation No 200

MRS DUNNE (11.01): I move:

That Variation No 200 to the Territory Plan, made pursuant to the Land (Planning and Environment) Act 1991, be disallowed.

We are here today because, despite a unanimous report of a four-person standing committee of this Assembly, all that was said in extensive consultation and in that committee has been disregarded. All that was said in that time was that draft variation 200 does not meet the needs of the people of the ACT and does not even meet the stated aims of the minister.

This minister and this government fly in the face of the evidence presented through the consultation process and in this report. The minister will stand here today and tell us that he made an election commitment to preserve the garden city. I contend, and the members of my committee contended when they wrote this report, that this is not the way to do it.

Let me preface my remarks with a disclaimer of sorts: I do not disagree with the basic thrust of preserving the garden city. Setting out to preserve the garden city character of Canberra while moving forward with a 21st century notion of planning is important. What this report showed, and what I contend today, is that this is not the way to do it.

Let's look at the elements of a garden city-this is one of the issues that we dwelt on considerably. Paragraph 2.3 on page 9 of the report says:

The Garden City notion was also proliferated from the late 1950's-

of course, it was before that-

when Canberra was developing into a series of new towns. The National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) 1970 Report 'Tomorrow's Canberra! Planning for Growth and Change' stated: 'The people of Canberra have continued to demonstrate their desire for low densities and garden shrubs', so the NCDC's policy premise for planning became:

a) retention of the small town character of the bush capital;

b) residential areas lying in the valleys and within a framework of hills;

c) a number of districts linked by a system of arterial roads and lying in the valleys between tree-covered hills and ridges; and

d) using vegetation and well-planned parks, playing fields, continuous street trees, no front fences to create one enormous garden suburb.

We talked to the planners about this and how with draft variation 200 we were actually creating or enhancing this garden city concept as laid out in the NCDC document. What it boiled down to was that the on-block vegetation that we have seen over the years contributed to the garden city concept. The genesis of this report was

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