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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 615 ..

It is worth reminding the Assembly that some things have changed in regards to our planning regime. We now have a statutory planning and land authority—more independent, it would seem, than the commissioner established in 1996—with its own planning and land council to provide it with guidance and a team of experts within it. When planning issues are referred to the AAT, the tribunal also now has recourse to planning advice. So some considerable work has gone into fashioning a planning regime that is professional, that is responsive to local interest, that aims to provide adequately for community input—although that is proving problematic for government—and that provides a reasonable level of appeal rights. Given these dimensions to the system we have, why is it necessary for the planning minister to call developments in?

I think the issues surrounding the proposed refurbishment and redevelopment of the Karralika site in Fadden have reminded us of this situation. The Fadden/Karralika proposal was certainly mismanaged from the start. There is no point in picking over the details of the development and communication of this proposal. Suffice it to say that it may have been a more straightforward process had the government not intended to keep it confidential, if all drawings and information that became publicly available were fair and accurate, and if the government and Karralika were able to be upfront with all the aspects of the proposed redevelopment.

There may well have been some opposition to this development and appeals might well have been pursued through the courts, but I would argue that we have such processes in place because we believe there are issues of justice and fairness at play and that any decisions we take as a community in the planning of our social facilities can and should be open and transparent.

The minister’s solution to the problems that arose once local residents became aware of the proposal and began to organise against it, was to reissue the application, follow the consultation process, call in the application to rule out any third party appeals, and then seek support from the Assembly. In that way, not only would the members of the Assembly be making a decision that the Planning and Land Authority is better able to make, we would be short-circuiting any appeal process that the residents and others would have recourse to, and we would be voting in a highly politicised environment.

We already have seen with the debate on this development that some opponents are prepared to make invalid assumptions on the nature of the facility, on its social impact, or on its imaginary future. I believe that Karralika’s very positive relationship with Canberra’s wider community has been damaged by the process; and riding roughshod over any appeal rights in respect to the Fadden site’s future development and arguing the toss in a pre-election Assembly are destined to make that much worse.

This bill would remove the power for the minister to call in, and make decisions on, applications for the approval of development under part 6 of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act 1991, so requiring all such decisions to be made by the ACT Planning and Land Authority.

It is fairly simple in operation and is centred on omitting sections 229A and 229B of the Land (Planning and Environment) Act, which give the minister the power to direct the

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