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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 03 Hansard (Wednesday, 10 March 2004) . . Page.. 976 ..

that assurances that were given—I think most notably to Mr Corbell—that matters were in hand, on reflection, were not maintained, kept or honoured.

These are matters of enormous regret. It is a result of that that Ms Gallagher has responded as she has—immediately, forthrightly, directly—to deal with this major breakdown in systems, circumstance and responsibility. There is now a major inquiry under way into every aspect of the operation of family services—indeed, our arrangements in relation to child protection. The response was generated by the government. It is full and it is completely open. It was generated by us. We have not sought to hide or cover up anything. We are now awaiting the responses to that. We have acted appropriately. Ms Gallagher has shown integrity and genuine leadership in relation to this issue and I applaud her for her responses.

MR CORNWELL: I have a supplementary question. Attorney, was it your office or your department that advised Ms Gallagher’s department about the question on notice you had received from the CSSE committee on 8 December?

MR STANHOPE: I have absolutely no idea.

Private developments—traffic arrangements

MS TUCKER: My question is to Mr Corbell. Mr Corbell, yesterday I asked you a question about Whitehaven and the inadequate traffic arrangements in that estate, and you explained that that was a responsibility of the last government and that your government was dealing much better with these issues. You said:

For any development application for a multi-unit development, the traffic circulation and parking issues are usually dealt with by Roads ACT as part of the interagency approval for any development that involves public/private roadway interaction.

You also said:

The key issue that we are seeking to get is a high quality design outcome and the road network within any private estate has to be considered as part of that process. So we try to capture it through the high quality sustainable design process. We seek to ensure that we create logical and safe transport connections within an estate as well as how the estate connects to public areas outside of the private lease.

I am concerned because, while you are giving us that reassurance, I know that since you have been Minister for Planning I have talked to you about a couple of developments where there have been serious concerns expressed by constituents and residents about this process. One in particular was a development in Turner, block 9-11 of section 63, where I have been told categorically by two residents that, in discussions that they had with city management, they were told that they would not approve the traffic arrangements for the development; yet this advice was ignored and the development was approved. So my question to you is: what importance is placed on advice regarding roads and traffic from city management when development decisions are made? Perhaps you will need to take this part on notice: how many other occasions since you have been in government has traffic and roads advice from city management been overruled or ignored by PALM and ACTPLA?

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