Page 665 - Week 02 - Thursday, 6 March 2008
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Planning and Development Act and now today—the new territory plan—there has been a fundamental reform of the way planning and development occurs here in the ACT. It is very much one of this administration’s most significant reform projects. For that reason, the work of those in the planning authority is particularly notable. I want to pass on my thanks to them for the dedicated and professional work that they have done. This has been no easy task.
I want to also talk today about the new territory plan and, essentially, the steps that we are taking today in endorsing this new plan. First of all, we are endorsing a new strategic planning framework for the territory. For the first time since self-government, the plan now formally recognises a strategic planning framework and a future urban development context for the territory. It does not simply accept that what exists exists and that it is the be-all and end-all of development approaches and new development fronts for the territory.
The inclusion of a new spatial planning framework for the territory initiated through the Canberra spatial plan process is now embedded in the new territory plan in the same way that it is embedded and recognised in the Planning and Development Act. That reform is a significant one, because, as a government and as a territory, when we endorse this plan we are now saying that this is where future urban development will be accommodated within the territory.
We are not just relying on the metropolitan plan that was in place from the 1950s until the mid-1990s. We are putting in place a new metropolitan planning framework, and that will stand the territory in good stead well into the future. It gives our community clear indications and options for future urban development. It gives those people who are looking for new homes and opportunities to build new homes and to create new places for their families places to go in Molonglo, Eastlake and Kowen. Those things are now embedded in this new territory plan, and those are very fundamental reforms.
The other fundamental reform, of course, is that it seeks to constrain development growth in the city. It seeks to have some regard to the physical footprint of the city in the broader region. The urban containment boundaries are recognised through the territory plan framework and the spatial planning policy that surrounds it.
There has been some discussion in comments today about issues such as maintaining and creating a more sustainable city and how we accommodate growth and redevelopment in the city. Mr Seselja, in particular, was critical of the approach adopted. I would say that what we have now in this place is a relative consensus on how urban redevelopment will be managed. I remember when I first came into this place there was significant debate about how urban redevelopment should be managed in our city. There were those who supported a free-for-all approach throughout our suburbs that basically encouraged redevelopment as and when it was needed, wherever it was needed. That was certainly the approach adopted by the previous Liberal administration, and that is why Labor was so critical of it. It was ad hoc and it was a free-for-all.
There are those, of course, who have always argued that we should not see any significant redevelopment occurring, even along public transport corridors. I
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