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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 4431 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

community consultation and involvement has been so enduring and has stood the test of time. This minister, who was hell-bent on tearing it down, has nothing to replace it with.

There is a long list here but I want to share with the Assembly my personal favourite. This comes from a major national company which attempted to acquire a direct grant of land adjoining a block that it already had. The direct grant of land was for 18 square metres. It took the company three years to acquire land valued at $2,000 and it cost them $50,000 in fees and expenses to acquire 18 square metres of land. Is it any wonder that companies think twice before locating in the ACT? Is it any wonder we are beginning to see a flight of capital from the ACT?

The problems we have in planning in the ACT are manifold. The minister here alienates everyone who comes into his path. He makes enemies where he used to have friends. He makes it up as he goes along, and we saw that today in relation to a question in this place from Ms Dundas: he was talking about fudging the Territory Plan. He has broken down all sense of trust in organisations, community groups and people who are interested in and associated with planning.

Trust is a very strong element in any community in which anything is going on that requires people to work together. There is no trust left between former members of LAPACs, people involved in community planning, people involved in business and people involved in the Planning Institute. All of that trust has gone under the supervision of this Minister for Planning.

Then we had the legislation. Since I have been a member in this place, I have been calling on a fairly regular basis for a review of the land act. It has not been forthcoming and, if it is to be forthcoming, it will be a review of the land act done by the planners. The people who, for the last 13 years, have been administering the land act will not have a clear fresh look at what the land act should be. It is as it was with the creation of the new planning authority by the planners themselves: it is putting the kids in charge of building the playground. It will turn out the way the planners want it and not to the benefit of the community.

There are all the problems of the administration of the new system. The new planning regime, not unexpectedly, has taken some time to bed down, but there are areas of particular concern, such as the role of the planning advisory council, the big questions about which development applications it considers, how long it should take to comment, when those comments will be made, whether it adds value to decisions that have to be made, and why a proponent cannot attend the discussions of the Planning and Land Council when it is discussing a relevant development application.

This indicates that there was no provision made for change management as the planning authorities moved from one structure to another. I raised this as an issue during the debate on the planning and land bill and, at the time, the minister and his staff said in a long-winded way that little or nothing had been done about change management.

Then there is the culture of the planning authority-"We have always done it like this. It was good enough for the NCDC days, so it is good enough now."What is worse is the patronising approach-"Don't you worry about that. We are the planners and we know

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