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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Wednesday, 30 June 2004) . . Page.. 3076 ..

Karralika, although I take Mrs Dunne’s point that the Assembly did make its feelings clear and the minister changed his position.

I might just refer to public interest. Let us look at the question of the great benefit to the community that came out of the development of the Metropolitan. It is unfortunate that Mr Corbell in his press statement of 19 December said that by calling in this development he had given the go-ahead to Civic’s renaissance as Canberra’s pre-eminent centre and that the Metropolitan was a key to the revitalisation of the Civic West precinct.

Let me say something about its social unsustainability. The housing component of this development will be expensive, adding to the glut of upmarket two-bedroom city units. More importantly, this intensive residential development included no affordable housing strategy, no plans for adaptable or accessible units and no commitment to public housing.

Turning to ecological unsustainability, while the minister talked about PALM’s high quality sustainable development process, there was no mention in this development of grey water recycling, fresh water collection, solar passive design, solar water hearing or roof gardens. It can be argued that he used call-in powers to override complaints over the removal of trees in the middle of the car park. However, the development proposal linked to the planned variation in Narrabundah has demonstrated that social benefit conditions can be imposed on developments. It is ironic that when it comes to sacrificing community use land, the government will impose conditions but for car parks it will not.

Members have said that the call-in powers have not been used very often. Well, I do not know—that, too, is a matter of opinion. From 1997 to 2001 the Liberal Party used call-in powers 20 times. From 2001 to now Labor has used it six times, and members have already mentioned some examples. I certainly would not regard any of them as particularly cutting edge. I do not think they were so dramatically in the public interest that normal appeal rights should have been overridden.

The basic point is that if a development is worth while it should be able to withstand appeals, scrutiny and testing. If we allow that process to occur then we have some hope that a development will meet social and environment standards and requirements. We have to remember that in some cases we are stuck with developments for up to 50 years. Developers are not necessarily going to be hanging around but neighbours and the city as a whole will have to live with these developments. So, from the Greens’ perspective, it is certainly not a good idea, on the grounds of what is basically a matter of opinion, for the minister to be given power to override all the normal procedures for ensuring some kind of rigorous planning process.

It is obvious that I will not be getting support for my bill but I thank members for their contribution.

Question put:

That this bill be agreed to in principle.

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