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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2744 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

I have talked to people in suburbs as far afield as Kaleen, Kambah, Aranda, Evatt, Chapman and Duffy. They do not want the impact of draft variation 200 on their suburbs. My colleague, Mrs Burke, has been talking to housing trust tenants who are concerned about the impact that draft variation 200 will have on them. My constituents in places like Evatt and Latham do not want this.

Mr Corbell has not been listening to these people; I wonder who he has been listening to. I wonder who Ms Tucker has been listening to, because she has not been listening to the community on this. She may have been listening to a narrow group, but she has not read the report and she has not read the 700 submissions and seen the variation of views. But the combining theme of 96 per cent of the people who came to us was: do not make draft variation 200.

We have to get it right, and Mr Corbell and Ms Tucker have got it very wrong. They have rapped around with fuzzy, warm, cosy rhetoric about how important draft variation 200 is, but I suspect it is the death knell of sustainable development in the ACT.

We spend a lot of time talking about how important the spatial plan is and how important it is to be strategic about it. But when this government paid for OECD officials to come here and talk to us about urban renaissance and urban renewal, the expert that they paid to come out here, Dr Joseph Konvitz, said-and it is a very important thing; it has a lot to do with draft variation 200-that we should be helping each urban place to achieve its potential, not according to an abstract model but rather according to an analysis of the specific strengths and weaknesses of the place.

Mr Speaker, draft variation 200 is an abstract model. This committee recommended that we look at each community on a case-by-case basis, look at its topography and orientation and see whether we have the right solution. But this minister and his colleague on the crossbench have failed to do that. In doing so, they propose another planning nightmare in the ACT. I commend the disallowance motion to the house.

MRS CROSS (11.23): It is a great shame that there is a need for this disallowance to be moved. It is also a shame that the minister is not able to work with members of the Assembly Committee on Planning and Environment to reach a compromise. This committee was charged with the responsibility for consulting with the broad community in Canberra on planning issues surrounding draft variation 200.

It is a shame that the work done by that committee in consulting with Canberrans seems to have been summarily dismissed by both the minister and the Greens. I am surprised that the Greens have dismissed the consultation process so willingly in the move to support the government.

Ms Tucker has so often spoken of the need for consultation in this Assembly. In fact, Ms Tucker has often been responsible for ensuring that consultation has taken place, particularly when wide-reaching legislation has been tabled or even hinted at. Ms Tucker, in my memory, is always the first person in this Assembly to promote the importance of the committee system and the need to listen to the community.

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