Page 181 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 8 December 2004
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the social infrastructure, the cultural expression, investment, environmental and urban quality as well as the maintenance of our public spaces.
Already the work of these groups has had an effect. There is an events program being developed for the city, and Childers Street in City West is to be remodelled to showcase best practice environmental management in the public realm. Clearly, this program will take a long-term view, up to a decade, to establish the city centre as a fitting community symbol for Canberra’s centenary in 2013. To realise this important objective, the program requires the continuous support of the government and stakeholders.
I’d now like to turn to the issue of community engagement and consultation. The Canberra community highlighted community consultation during the election as an important issue. During the last term of the government, following a comprehensive review by the National Institute for Governance, I announced a number of initiatives that I believe and the government believes will result in a process that ensures broad community representation and participation in consultation on planning matters. Underpinning the initiatives is the desire to ensure that community consultation on ACT planning activities is appropriate, inclusive and administratively practical.
The key components of the package include:
• an invitation to the existing community councils to participate in engagement in parts of the planning process aligned to those matters through which the advice of the Planning and Land Council is sought—
Mrs Burke: Are you going to pay them?
MR CORBELL: Yes, we are, actually. They include:
• the strengthened role for the Planning and Development Forum and changes to its membership and terms of reference;
• the proposed consultation matrix that is being developed by the ACT Planning and Land Authority, identifying minimum levels of consultation for the different exercises it undertakes.
This approach recognises that the community councils have provided an enduring and extremely valuable community service and have valuable grassroots links that can provide a conduit for engaging with the community on important planning issues. To help achieve this, the government will be contributing up to $40,000 per year to help with the role being asked of the councils by the government.
Further, the Planning and Development Forum will be used to discuss broad strategic planning and development of policy with the authority’s key stakeholder interests. The forum consists of representatives from the community councils, the conservation council and ACTCOSS, the Master Builders Association, the HIA and the Property Council, along with the professions—the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, the Planning Institute of Australia and the Landscape Architects Institute.
Mr Speaker, finally, the government will continue its program through the work of the Land Development Agency. The Land Development Agency will:
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