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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2740 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

that the on-block vegetation became less and less important while other issues became significantly more important.

None of the principal elements of the garden city notion-the green backdrop to the city, the ridges, hills and buffers, the park concept, the street trees, the layout of the streets, the wide verges-is actually addressed by draft variation 200. The only element of the garden city that is addressed in draft variation 200 is on-block vegetation, and that only fleetingly.

What we found was that this was a too prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approach. In the Planning and Environment Committee, of which I am very proud to be chairman, we take our work very seriously. We came to a unanimous decision that this was not the way to go, and we did not come to it lightly. I pay tribute to the members of the committee for the professional way in which they addressed this issue.

I think I have to pay tribute to Mr Hargreaves, who came to us one day and said, "We have to answer one vital question: will draft variation 200 make it better or make it worse?"This was our starting point. We discussed it, we looked at all the pros and cons and we collectively answered the question that Mr Hargreaves asked. Draft variation 200 will not make it better.

A huge amount of consultation went with draft variation 200. You will no doubt be aware that there were many changes throughout the consultation process and that draft variation 200 had a forerunner in draft variation 192, which limited dual and triple occupancies to 5 per cent and had its interim effect at the beginning of December 2002.

Draft variation 200 itself was released in May 2002 and it went through many changes. It was changed in August 2002 to allow further development applications to be considered. In September 2002, new private open space standards came into effect. In November 2002 and on 17 December 2002, more changes were made, the latter including into draft variation 200 the 5 per cent dual occupancy limits previously in draft variation 192.

There was a final draft variation, which was presented to the executive and then to the Planning and Environment Committee in December 2002. Over that time, what had originally started as draft variation 200 changed beyond recognition. What people first started to comment on in May 2000, by December 2000 was an entirely different beast.

There were 700 submissions at various stages of this process between May and the tabling of the committee's report in April last year. That is a fairly substantial chunk of submissions for any change to the Territory Plan-far more than we had experienced on any other. A substantial number of them were to the green paper version that went to PALM, but the Planning and Environment Committee received in excess of 200 submissions on draft variation 200. We conducted 25-odd hours of hearings.

What did it boil down to? What was the community saying about draft variation 200? I will just pick out a few things. On page 14 of the committee's report, it says:

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