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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 4437 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mr Speaker, that is the government's record, that is the work we have done. We have done a comprehensive and overarching analysis of our capacity to plan for our future, to plan for the places where people will need to live, work, play and invest.

What has been the response of the broad community to these initiatives? Mr Speaker, they have been strongly welcomed, although not without debate. My office now receives hardly a complaint on dual occupancy development. I doubt that Mr Smyth could boast the same. The reason for that is that we have put in place a strong framework that people understand. Dual occupancy development occurs in a strategic way around key nodes across our city, not in the ad hoc, haphazard way fostered by the Liberal Party. The government now receives strong endorsement from a range of organisations which we rarely see endorsing Labor government approaches.

For example, the government has received endorsements from the Property Council of Australia, from the Master Builders Association, from the HIA and from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects for the significant work we have done in setting in place a strategic framework for the future growth and development of the city. The Property Council of Australia called on you, Mrs Dunne, to show bipartisanship and show leadership in endorsing the need for a strategic planning framework. Unfortunately, you have failed that challenge to date. I encourage you to reconsider your approach on that matter.

The government is still moving forward. We recognise that the land act is a complex, detailed and difficult piece of legislation to administer, and that is why I have already indicated on a number of occasions that we do need to reform it. We need to reform the land act to remove the duplicated and difficult areas which make development difficult in Canberra. That work has already started with the opportunities to apply preliminary assessments across whole sections of the city before land is released so that, when land is released, the private sector investor does not need to do that planning work, adding certainty and timeliness to the process.

In addition, we will also be embarking on a broader and wide-ranging review of the land act and the new chief planning executive, Mr Neil Savery, has already commenced work on the process for achieving that.

The government's record is a strong one. It is a detailed and comprehensive one. We have linked economic development policy with land use and strategic planning objectives, and we are starting to see the results of that investment, an investment in a reskilled and newly emerged planning organisation playing its role in informing public, government and community debate about the future growth and development of our city.

MS DUNDAS (4.19): I will try to be brief considering this is an MPI. I would like to start off by responding to a point that Minister Corbell raised in his speech about the lack of complaints coming through about dual occupancies. I agree that the number of complaints about dual occupancies has dropped considerably, but concerns are still being raised about how dual occupancies are going. I have had extensive contact with a member of the community who has a number of grave concerns about a dual occupancy happening next door to her.

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