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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3071 ..

Assembly than there has been in previous Assemblies. Also, I think there has been a change in attitude on the part of the Labor Party in relation to their use.

Very rarely in the previous two Assemblies with which I have had an association did the Labor spokesman, quite frankly, not go berserk at the prospect of a minister exercising his powers under the land act to call in a development. I made the particular point when I took up my job as shadow planning minister that I would not follow down that path, that I would look at issues on their merits. In fact, I have been, on occasions, one of the people who have gone to the planning minister and said, “I think you should consider exercising your call-in powers in this case.” There have been occasions when I have congratulated the minister for so doing. But there have been occasions when I have made the point that I did not think their use would be appropriate in the circumstances, and when the minister has gone ahead and used them, I have criticised him for so doing.

My recollection—and it may not be a complete recollection—is that during the 2½ years of this Assembly the minister has exercised his call-in powers on five occasions. He has exercised those powers once in relation to Kingston foreshore and once in relation to the development known as Space on the corner of Northbourne Avenue, opposite the Rex Hotel with Condamine Street on the Turner side and Ipima Street on the Braddon side. He also exercised this power once in relation to Tanjil Loop. I thought that was important and I congratulated the government for cutting through what I saw as needless delay in the bushfire recovery process. I think, however, it is unfortunate that after the minister exercised his call-in powers to speed up the process and a decision was made, this work then sat in housing for many months before any activity was undertaken in relation to tendering for the buildings. The tender process has fallen over and there has to be re-tendering.

I have been very critical of the minister—not the acting minister—for his use of the call-in power in respect of the two other instances, both of which relate to developments in Gungahlin. It is my view and the view of many in the planning community that he did so in contravention of the territory plan. But it is one of those things that you cannot really test, except through Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act and there is no-one with standing who has the will to do it. So unfortunately those issues remain untested. I think this creates a very bad precedent because, in exercising his call-in powers in those cases, I fear that the minister may have approved things that are completely contrary to how the territory plan relates to Gungahlin. And that is really the crux of the matter. It is not the tool that is a problem. The underlying mechanisms in the territory plan and in the land act are more of a problem, and we have talked about that in this place on a number of occasions.

ACTPLA is currently reviewing, and has $350,000 over the next two years to review, the planning regime, which includes the land act, and it may be that there will be more constraints on the exercise of call-in powers as a result of that review. When the Planning and Land Act was introduced and passed there were some conditions placed on the use of call-in powers that had not been in place previously and I think generally the legislation has worked moderately well. It does create some checks and balances.

This is not an arbitrary exercise of executive power, and under the current regime the impact is less than what applied prior to the changes that were made through the Planning and Land Act. My colleagues and I believe that the call-in power is a very

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