Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2761 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

that level, because you cannot maintain it at 75 per cent efficiency. The infrastructure has to be maintained at the level that is necessary to keep the system working, whether it is being used to its potential or not. Is that sustainable?

DV 200 says, "No, don't do that, just sprawl. Go further out, go all the time, go anywhere, but don't look at situations. We're going to look at one situation and cover it with one blanket."That is not how cities survive.

An interesting point-the minister might like to jump to his feet and tell us why-is that I understand that the committee never heard from the Office of Sustainability. The government put in place this overarching organisation called the Office of Sustainability. Why? To make Canberra sustainable. I do not think any of us disagree with that. But more and more often we are hearing that the office is not getting the resources that it needs and is not being consulted on key issues.

If you thought the garden city draft variation was going to deliver sustainability, would it not be a good idea to run it past the Office of Sustainability to see, with all their experience and all the knowledge and know-how that they have, whether it was actually sustainable? That did not happen. I could be wrong. I am happy to be corrected on that. The minister can jump to his feet and tell me that I am wrong. The whole point of what we are doing here is to make Canberra more sustainable and a better place to live in the future. That cannot happen if the planning regime that this government puts into place causes Canberra to wither on the vine, and that is the risk we run.

Sustainability will dominate more and more of our discussions more and more into the future. If the draft variation the government puts forward that supposedly guarantees a garden city has not had the scrutiny of the Office of Sustainability run over it, you would have to question whether the government's commitment to sustainability is genuine and whether it actually believes in the garden city concept, because sustainability, more than anything else, will, I believe, dominate the future of this city.

Mr Speaker, let's move on to just one small area of what is being proposed, that is, the use of dual occupancies. We contend that dual occupancies should be approved where they are appropriate. The system being put forward by the government says that dual occupancies can occur only within a defined area, which the government has now defined, around suburban centres and get unit titling.

If you want to go further out into the city, if you want to get further out into the suburbs, you can do any dual occupancy development you want, except that the limiting sum on that is that you will not get the finance. The banks will not finance something that cannot be sold independently. From the party that talks all the time about equity, we have suddenly got a model whereby only the rich will be able to afford a dual occupancy development in areas other than those defined by Mr Corbell. They are the only ones that will be able to afford to build them, because nobody else will get the finance.

I would like to raise the case of an older Canberra couple that have approached me. They used to live in Eucumbene Drive, but their house was destroyed by the fires of 18 January. They find themselves in the predicament of being underinsured and

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .