Page 2001 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (6.10): On the whole, my concerns with this clause are similar to my concerns, which I did not get to express because I was not in the room, on clause 143.
MR SPEAKER: The question before the house is Mr Seselja’s amendment.
DR FOSKEY: Yes. I do support the amendment; nonetheless, I have concerns with the whole clause.
While ACTPLA sometimes goes out of its way and beyond its legislative obligation to inform the community of proposed developments, we have also heard the previous planning minister defending ACTPLA for not informing people, who really should have received notice of a development, by saying that ACTPLA had fulfilled their bare minimum legislative duty. In my opinion, this whole section is a way to protect ACTPLA—when people do not hear about something, it is covered by the legislation. It is in this light that clauses like this one appear to vest too much trust and discretion in ACTPLA to do the right thing.
Clause 150 (5) means that a person who has not been notified and who fails to object to an inappropriate development proposal in time will effectively lose any legal remedy. While I support the amendment, I am still going to oppose the whole clause. I am sure that there is a large amount of goodwill and good intentions within ACTPLA, but the point is that good legislation cannot rely on trust. It establishes checks and balances and prescribes good practice. The definition and effect of the word “adjoins” in this clause makes it far too restrictive. It means that a multistorey development that overshadows someone’s home, destroys privacy, creates traffic snarls and possibly makes the neighbourhood unsafe for children to walk around, could go ahead without that household being notified, because the house does not actually touch the proposed development site.
I know that the issue is more about areas we are seeing more of where there are multi-residential developments and where there may be hundreds of people in an adjoining development. I think they have every right to know. I will support Mr Seselja’s clause because that is the least we can do to fix this up.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo (6.13): I thank the minister and Dr Foskey for their support. It is one of the issues that really do get to people if they feel they have not been informed about proposals or developments in their area, especially on adjoining land. I think it is really important that we ensure that people are at least told and given time to object if they feel that that is necessary. I think that is a legitimate concern of people and hopefully this will help in that process.
Amendment agreed to.
Clause 150, as amended, agreed to.
Clauses 151 and 152, by leave, taken together and agreed to.
Clause 153.
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