Page 1790 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 21 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
social and cultural planners whose work is to consider those elements. I appreciate their work. It should be essential to the processes of planning bodies, such as this one. However, this bill, in essence, ignores it. One wonders if we would have ended up with the massive Canberra Centre shopping mall if cultural planners had been used to assess the social economic impact of privatising so much public space, and in integrating many large non-innovative, non-local, market-dominated shopping chains into one relatively massive building complex.
This bill is clearly designed to facilitate a more streamlined and transparent planning and development regime. To a considerable extent, it appears to have succeeded with that task. Sadly, it does not address the ongoing failure to consider the long-term social impact of planning decisions, which has resulted in large-scale mistakes, such as the Canberra Centre. More profoundly, the object fails to integrate equity into its goals either separately or as part of an enhanced definition of sustainable development. I remind the Assembly of the comments made by ACTCOSS in its apparently ignored submission to the Assembly committee inquiry into the bill last year. It says in relation to sustainable development:
In 1992, the Commonwealth Government, endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments, released a foundation document on sustainability: the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development. Its core objectives were stated to be:
• To enhance individual and community well-being and welfare by following a path of economic development that safeguards the welfare of future generations
• To provide for equity within and between generations
• To protect biological diversity and maintain essential ecological processes and life-support systems
It is interesting to compare this with the principles in clause 8 of the bill. While the basic concepts of environmental protection and intergenerational equity are largely the same, the idea that sustainable development incorporates the promotion of individual and community wellbeing and welfare is not present. Similarly, while the definition in the bill expressly includes the principle of equity between generations, there is no reference to equity within generations, meaning that the principle of development should help ensure that everyone has equitable access to resources has been lost.
ACTCOSS would strongly recommend that the principles of community welfare and equity within generations be reintroduced to the definition of “sustainable development”. A minority government would undoubtedly have been prepared to negotiate on this matter. A majority government, unable to consult or provide briefings to members for three months due to the pressures of work, would not. But this is a matter we will be happy to return to next year or after the next election.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Planning, Minister for Tourism, Sport and Recreation, Minister for Industrial Relations) (8.06): The government will not be supporting Dr Foskey's argument. The object of the act replicates the existing object of the Planning and Land Act, one of the acts to be consolidated in the Planning and Development Bill. I understand that the Greens want
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .