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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Tuesday, 24 August 2004) . . Page.. 4066 ..

With all this in mind I would now like to return to the government’s commitment to planning, which was contained in our planning and land management policy for Canberra, Planning for people. The policy articulated the need to build a strategic planning approach, develop more open and accountable planning, protect the qualities of the garden city and our open space network, revitalise our neighbourhoods and local centres, and restore public land development activity to the community.

Since coming to office the government has delivered on all these commitments. In the past two years the government has introduced the Planning and Land Act, which established the ACT Planning and Land Authority, a statutorily independent authority that develops and implements planning policy, oversees the land release program and determines planning proposals at arm’s length from government. We have established the Planning and Land Council to provide the minister and the ACT Planning and Land Authority with independent and impartial expert advice on matters of planning importance, in parallel with the authority giving consideration to a development proposal. All of this information is publicly available every month after the council meets.

We have established the Land Development Agency to undertake land development in a manner that ensures that maximum community benefit is achieved. We have abolished the position of Commissioner for Land and Planning—removing an unnecessary layer of assessment in the planning assessment and appeal process—and we have introduced provisions into the Land (Planning and Environment) Act that allow proponents to seek the reconsideration of development applications, allowing for a simple process where ACTPLA can reconsider a matter without the decision-making process having to resort to a formal appeal in the first instance.

We have introduced changes to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Amendment Act, which provides for significant changes to the way planning appeals are performed, including an increased emphasis on resolving disputes through the use of mediation prior to formal tribunal hearings; a time limit on the completion of planning appeals; and the concept of awarding costs against a party where it fails to comply with the direction of a tribunal. It is worth noting what even my most vocal and trenchant critic, Mrs Dunne, has said. I quote:

I have to go back and say about the issues raised in the first instance by the minister that the changes to the AAT in particular—

And these are her words. She said:

—are brilliant changes, and we need to acknowledge those.

In fact, she went on to say:

The introduction of mediation has been a great innovation.

I welcome her endorsement of that approach. Not only that, but we have developed a future direction for planning and development in Canberra. It is the first metropolitan plan since the early 1980s—the first since self-government. The Canberra spatial plan

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