Page 3491 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 2005
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Mr Seselja said that we could give up designing suburbs in which people are happy to walk. No, we are not going to be New York here in the ACT. I do not know if that is one of our aspirations. It is not what most people would want. We are going to have to make suburbs in which people will walk. A lot of people cannot afford to drive their cars much any more, so they will have to walk. We do not have public transport that pops from street to street, so they will have to get on shanks’s pony and walk. Let us not deny that and let us not put people who cannot drive their cars into the position where it is inconvenient to walk as well.
Yes, it is certainly true that the structure of retail in ACT is a problem. It always has been. The NCDC built ACT suburbs at a time when the car was king. It was never envisaged that we would have to find other ways of getting around. Public transport was always a low priority. Maybe it was a bit much to have local centres as well as intermediate and town centres, but let us really look at that and look at the way that we want our city to be.
If the market says it is right to build houses now and later on it says it is right to revive shopping centres, if we have alienated those areas to houses, we are not going to be able to build those shopping centres that Mrs Dunne was talking about. Florey would not be thriving again as a shopping centre if it had been established as residential dwellings, as is happening in other centres. We have got to make sure that that does not happen and that the market, if we are going to let it rule, really can operate. Yes, we do need to go back to talking to people. The Greens are not sorry about variation 200. I think that Mrs Dunne really misinterpreted the spirit of this motion. Variation 200, especially in retrospect, looks like a very good idea. If there are any problems that people have identified, well, it might need some finetuning.
MR TEMPORARY DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.
MR CORBELL (Molonglo—Minister for Health and Minister for Planning, and Acting Minister for Children, Youth and Family Support, Acting Minister for Women and Acting Minister for Industrial Relations): I seek leave to make an explanation under standing order 47.
Leave granted.
MR CORBELL: In her speech Dr Foskey said that I had used the argument that the proportion of retail expenditure at local centres had fallen from around 20 per cent in the early 1970s to less than 10 per cent today as a reason to abandon local centres. That is not what I said. I said that the level of retail expenditure had fallen from 20 per cent to 10 per cent at local centres and that that was a factor in their viability.
Mr Corbell’s amendment agreed to.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
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