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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 5031 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

I will harp back to some of the things he said. When he first became the Minister for Planning he stated:

No aspect of long-term planning direction will be left untouched.

He has been so busy with long-term planning approaches and leaving no aspect of it unturned that he has forgotten about the day-to-day administration, approval and land release-all of the things that make business turn over in this place. The other day I highlighted a litany of some of the planning disasters that the Minister for Planning has overseen in his two years in office: the St Anne convent fiasco-the site has taken four years to come to fruition; the dispensing of retail sites in Gungahlin for Coles, Woollies and Aldi took 21/2 years; and the unconscionable delays on section 56. Even when things had been approved we came back and said, "You can't do that. You have to preserve the trees."They are not significant trees and approval had already been given for them to be taken down. They had to go back and redo the work.

Other disasters have been the lopsided development, which means that town centres cannot prosper but that the airport can go ahead; the absolute failures of the direct sale of land process in many places in the ACT; and the unconscionable time it takes for direct land sales to take place. My personal favourite was the 18 square metres of land acquired by a major national company. The land was valued at $2,000, but it took three years and $50,000 in fees and planning time of professionals to get 18 square metres of land.

I receive constant representations from members of the public who are trying to get their planning proposals put through. They are not the NICTAs of the world; they are the supermarket proprietors and the small shopping centre owners that are constantly being held up by this government. They cannot make a crust because of this government's ineptitude in dealing with the planning processes.

In January 2002 a shop owner came and told me that he was approaching the government for a direct grant of land adjoining the land he currently owns. He has spoken to me on several occasions about this matter, but I last spoke to him about it last Saturday. At one public function I introduced him to the Chief Minister because he was so frustrated with what was happening in the planning department. The Chief Minister said that he would get onto it-that was over a year ago-and he has still made no progress. This is a searing indictment of the failures of this government.

What do we have in the economic white paper? The government is transfixed. It realises that it has real problems with both the planning system and the Minister for Planning. There are actions in the paper. Action 13 states:

The ACT Planning and Land Authority will develop systems to ensure businesses and the community are given correct and timely information in relation to building and development applications and overall planning requirements.

This is not an action for a visionary white paper. This should be core business for any public service organisation in this town or any other town. In the capital of a First World country, we are saying that to improve our economic performance we have to get our planners to tell those responsible for building what on earth is going on in this town. This is a searing indictment of a lacklustre minister who is driving this town broke.

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