Page 1348 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
There is space to widen the car park. And there is not really space to cause the considerable amount of traffic, especially after school and on Thursday and Friday nights and Saturday mornings, to go through a narrow residential lane to get out. It has an impact on those people who live in those residences. It is too narrow and it is unsafe.
The Stanhope government needs to come clean with the people of Nicholls. They need to openly consult and go there with an open mind and maybe the people of Nicholls will have a solution which is better than the one put forward by the Stanhope government. I commend Mr Coe for bringing this matter forward and I hope that we will end up with a good outcome for the people of Nicholls.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (5.24): I will not speak very long on this motion. Ms Le Couteur has already covered some key concerns from a planning point of view, particularly around neighbourhood planning and the importance of getting back to some good neighbourhood planning processes.
For me, it does bring up that we recently had the Hawker situation and we now have one out at Nicholls. For me, that is about neighbourhood planning and reinstituting some neighbourhood planning so that we can be looking in a comprehensive way at community hubs such as shopping centres and so forth—looking at them in a comprehensive way so we are going to get some good planning outcomes. The changes outlined by the government for Nicholls cannot be a temporary short fix. We really do need to see a lasting solution put in place.
I would also like to make the point—it has been raised this afternoon—that this car park has been around for some time. From the outset, adequate parking should be planned for and built at shopping centres and future growth should be taken into account and addressed at that point—not further down the track, when you end up with a problem that has obviously caused some great difficulties for the people of Nicholls.
I do hope, however, also that the Liberals will not be contesting every planning and territory and municipal decision made in the Assembly.
This comes back to consultation systems at both ACTPLA and TAMS—ensuring that we have some robust, sound consultation processes in place. But before that, or going hand in glove with that, is this idea of neighbourhood planning so that we do get a comprehensive, well thought through, well considered plan to begin with—and one that has engaged with the community.
Neighbourhood planning is not just a one-off event; it is an ongoing event. Neighbourhoods change, and needs within neighbourhoods change. Therefore, there is a need to have some sort of ongoing mechanism where you can engage with citizens within the neighbourhood, where they do understand those processes and how they can engage. That is all part of good community engagement.
We will be supporting the amendments, the motion that has been put up by Mr Coe, but we will urge that neighbourhood planning become a thing of the present, not just a thing of the past.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .