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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4057 ..

MRS DUNNE: Then we have had, of course, Draft Variation 200—the spur in the side of a great number of people. I would like to share the following comment with members of the community. It says:

Town planning in 2003 took some particular turns…It began with “Variation 200” to the Territory Plan, which affected every block in all residential areas throughout metropolitan Canberra.

It was probably the most contentious of all Variations. Seven hundred formal representations were generated by the Draft, and 96 per cent were opposed to it.

For the first time in my experience, the Draft Variation was opposed by every one of the nine professional organisations and business groups involved in Canberra’s building industry.

When the Real Estate Institute and the Royal Australian Institute of Architects are loudly singing from the same songsheet, something most unusual is afoot.

The Draft Variation was unanimously rejected by the Assembly’s non-partisan Planning and Environment Committee—its report contained some of the most scathing comments on the Draft and the Planning Authority that I have ever read.

Despite the…strength and depth of opposition to the Draft, planning minister Simon Corbell has succeeded in getting the Variation through the Assembly, with support from Kerrie Tucker and John Hargreaves who reneged on his decision to reject the Draft Plan as a member of the Planning and Environment Committee.

Variation 200, which came into effect in August 2003, has two main provisions.

It goes on. When you read this it sounds like a speech that I made in this place. Fortunately, it was an article in the Canberra Times on Friday 23 April this year by Mr Phil O’Brien, a chartered town planner and a senior former planner with the National Capital Development Commission and the ACT Planning Authority. These are not my words; these are the words of professional planners. What we have across the territory is that sort of scathing criticism. We have seen the problems for this minister in relation to Tasman House and the unconscionable delays there from his own factional colleagues in the CFMEU.

We have the failure of the interaction of the spatial plan and draft variation 200. Back in 2002 I was saying in this place that the policy had got out of sync—that we were doing two things in step that should have been done sequentially, and that future generations will judge us very severely if we get it wrong. Really, the draft variation is part of a mosaic that does not fit with a so-called strategic approach. You cannot be strategic and ad hoc at the same time; something has to give.

This was constantly the message throughout our inquiry into draft variation 200. I recall extensive evidence from the Turner Residents Association. Not only had they been draft variation 200-ed, they had also been neighbourhood planned. Members of the Turner community were saying that, after the process of being neighbourhood planned, there was a list of 42 actions to be carried out. Ms Katie Saxby said to the planning and environment committee in February 2003:

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