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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 06 Hansard (Wednesday, 23 June 2004) . . Page.. 2564 ..

instance, in the estimates committee report the other day, a section called “working collaboratively”. Working collaboratively is a phrase that appears time after time in the budget papers in relation to planning, as one of the highlights of planning, but the thing is that the community is not finding that we are working collaboratively. We seem to be paying lip-service to it, not really engaging the community in a way that is meaningful.

We have to work towards a truly integrated planning approval system. One of the big problems I have always had with planning in the ACT is the land act. The thing that makes everything work, or not work, is the land act. I will not bore you with my usual quote from the Stein report about how the land act is a disgrace, because it is. Over the years, while I have been the planning spokesperson, the Liberal opposition has worked tirelessly to obtain a review of the land act. We are getting it quite some time after we called for it and I am glad to see that it is happening. I think that it is a good thing and I am pleased to see that the staff who are undertaking that review are new to ACTPLA and have not been involved in the last 13 years of running the land act. I think you need that fresh look. (Extension of time granted.)

However, I am dissatisfied with the time this will take. We will be well into the term of the next Assembly before we see the review of the land act coming to fruition. Without this review we will not have the system that we need. We need a high-quality, innovative and sustainable outcome from our planning processes. We need a variety of planning styles that will allow for choice in development across the ACT.

One thing we need more than anything else is a way of integrating all the legislation that relates to planning. The comment from all around the place is that we need a totally integrated planning system. When I looked at these documents today—the ones released by the minister at lunchtime—I thought that perhaps we may be getting down that path. There are some very good elements there but it is a very tiny step down the path to a totally integrated planning system.

The ACT should be pushing to have a real independent planning authority that has powers to sign off on all applications, even applications affected by the proposed tree and heritage legislation. As things stand now, ACTPLA can sign off on an application, then the application goes to the conservator, who looks at the trees and could say, “No, we cannot do that” and bounce the DA. Or the application can go off to heritage, as proposed by Mr Wood, and somebody in heritage could say, “No, you cannot do that” and bounce the DA.

This is not integrated planning and it is counter to the spirit of the national approach of the ministerial council on planning and local government. It is something that we, in the ACT, if we are to keep our pre-eminent position, should be embracing. However, the policy steps being taken by this government, by Mr Stanhope with his tree legislation, by Mr Wood with the heritage legislation, are counter to that. We are going to end up with three approval authorities, which is no way to have a totally integrated planning system.

In addition to that, when we redo the land act, we also really need to have better land use policies. Currently, our land use policies are not forward looking, they lack strategic, spatial and economic analysis—as the planning and environment committee has said on a number of occasions—and they do not seem to take into account adjacent areas. They

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