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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3073 ..

particularly the case since we have brought in a specialist division of the AAT to deal just with planning issues. The minister has noted on a number of occasions that the vast majority of AAT appeals are actually decided through mediation.

At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.

MS DUNDAS: Mr Speaker, it is time to demonstrate our confidence in our planning system and to remove the minister’s unnecessary ability to meddle in development approvals. Call-in powers subvert the proper checks and balances on planning approvals in the ACT.

At the last election the Labor Party also went to the people campaigning against the former Liberal government’s use of call-in powers. Yet it now becomes clear that they are not prepared to stop the same problems occurring into the future. It appears that the ALP is of the opinion that they are qualified to decide when the AAT should be blocked from exercising its proper functions. The Minister for Planning in this Assembly has repeatedly used the call-in powers, often in defiance of community opinion. We had much debate in this place about the Karralika development and the Gungahlin town centre development.

The presence of planning call-in powers remains unpopular in the community and degrades confidence in our public institutions. Even if they are used with the best of intentions, members of the public invariably see them as examples of political expediency—be that for or against a development—and this leads to suspicions of less than transparent deals with developers. It has the unfortunate effect of making our political institutions look grubby and unnecessarily blocks well-meaning objectors from having their day in court and their voices heard.

I find it paradoxical that while the government has aimed to create a planning system that operates at arms length from government and has gone to great lengths to reduce political influence on the new planning authority, it retains the most obvious and controversial instrument of political interference in the planning process. This should be seen by our planners, our judges and members of our community as an act of political opportunism. If the government generally believes that our planning review processes are not functioning correctly, then let us sit down and look more closely at fixing that system.

Although we have set up the ACT Planning and Land Authority to be an independent statutory authority, the government in this Assembly still has control of policy. If there are problems with the policy, such that the minister feels he needs to call in a development, then let us work through those policy issues.

And let us work in the community. We need to recognise that LAPACs have not been operating for quite a while. The community planning forums were scrapped and the community councils have not yet taken on their role of picking up planning issues and consulting with the community. We know that when the community and developers are involved, issues are often resolved before they get to the appeals stage; or if they get to

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