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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4060 ..

Walter Burley Griffin planned this city. In the meantime the Liberals unplanned this city, and now Simon Corbell is putting the plans back into this city. In my view, he is almost as visionary as Burley Griffin. The government has completed the Canberra spatial plan, the first comprehensive strategic plan for the future development of this city since self-government. It has also adopted its economic white paper, which outlines the key directions necessary for Canberra to maintain a dynamic and competitive economy. Together these two documents, in conjunction with the social plan, underpin the Canberra plan and provide Canberrans with a clear vision for the future development and the health of this city. The Canberra spatial plan and economic white paper were prepared collaboratively to ensure that the aspirations for the economic performance of the city could be effectively achieved within the proposed strategic planning framework.

Already we have demonstrations of this. The draft Canberra spatial plan has confirmed what the OECD advised—that we need an identifiable, pre-eminent and vibrant “city heart”—something missing during the reign of the Carnell and Humphries governments. The City West master plan identifies opportunities for new investment and linkages with the Australian National University. Where was the then government when the need for that arose? Nowhere to be seen—and there was no plan.

It can be anticipated that the Canberra central program will similarly identify opportunities to build partnerships. We have master planning for the Woden and Belconnen town centres, facilitating renewed interest in those areas. The spatial plans propose further investigation of future employment nodes in areas where urban development is anticipated to occur, like the airport. The Canberra region has approximately 1.5 million square metres of office space, which represents the fourth-largest office stock behind Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane—eight per cent of the Australian market. This reflects the concentration of Australia’s population and business on the eastern seaboard, but its significance for the ACT is the degree to which we place ourselves to capture a greater degree of this investment.

Pivotal to realising this is the need to further improve the operation of a planning system and the partnerships we foster. An example of this has been the recent launch of the design policy books and refined development assessment process, which replace much of the cumbersome and confusing processes associated with high quality sustainable design without compromising those principles. The government is working towards a planning system that encourages the community to be involved in the planning process at the policy development phase, so that anyone working to help realise the strategic vision should not be “penalised” by the planning system, but “rewarded” by it.

In undertaking the detailed planning for land development the Land Development Agency will take into account the objects of the Planning and Land Act 2002 and contribute to the orderly and sustainable development of the ACT, consistent with the social, environmental and economic aspirations of the people of the ACT in accordance with sound financial principles—neither of which have been introduced to those opposite yet. I look forward to the opportunity for this government to introduce to members opposite things like sound financial principles. I am sure that, when they meet them, they will realise how wonderful they are.

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