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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Thursday, 4 March 2004) . . Page.. 730 ..

favour of all those things. It is a party of business, a party of small business, a party of choice and a party of freedom of the individual to choose.

You also have to recognise that, whatever Canberra’s planning faults, we do have a finite community here. We are part of a larger region. I know a lot of people come to Canberra from the country to do their grocery shopping. They might come here once a week. People come up from as far down the coast as Eden and Pambula, or even from Wagga. Wagga has some very good centres itself. Certainly, they come from Cooma and around the district to shop here, as do the people in Canberra. However, there is still a finite area.

All of those things are very relevant to what this committee did. I suppose we could have gone down the path of saying, “Thousands of people signed the petition to have Aldi at the markets, so there is obviously a lot of support in the community, especially in Belconnen and among people who shop at the markets, who would like to see an Aldi-type supermarket there at the markets.” During this inquiry the government made some decisions in relation to Aldi at Kippax and also at Conder.

There were also a lot of comments made in the committee meetings, even in the couple of meetings I attended, and in the reports, about equity between all centres, consistency of policy and improvements in policy. Accordingly, some pretty reasonable recommendations were made that I did not have any trouble supporting. Certainly, the recommendation that the government facilitate more open competition through the application of more flexibility in land use policies to provide the best opportunity for business to develop in the ACT is terribly important. It worries me with this particular government is not doing enough for business and is not doing enough to provide the best opportunities for businesses to develop here. Regarding things such as what we are talking about here—flexibility in land use policies—we do see some serious deficiencies in how this government and its department are going about it.

There are other areas that I could mention—for example, payroll tax. It is clear that if you ease that tax you will encourage business. There are many areas in which this government needs to do more, but clearly the committee felt that, in this inquiry, on this limited issue, there should be more flexibility in the land use policies. That, in itself, will assist greatly to give business the opportunity it requires. If there is any way we can speed things up, that would be wonderful. I hear constantly from people interstate and overseas in other developed countries that it does not take very long to get things approved there. However, in Canberra, there are still some fairly significant improvements that can be made.

We recommended that the government take a more flexible approach when applying land use policies to allow for outcomes that will benefit the community. Again, this ties in very nicely with No 1 because here we are looking at something that, quite clearly, a large number of people in our community would feel the benefit of. It is a cheaper option, a different option, something that is very important to the consumer. Not everyone can afford to shop at topnotch places. It is crucially important we have a good range and a good choice so that people can shop around and get a good bargain.

Recommendation 3: the committee wanted the government to reassess the current land use policies as they apply to Canberra town centres to ensure that that same consistent

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