Page 1389 - Week 04 - Thursday, 26 March 2009
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which it could, if it was so minded, disallow it. This really just seems like a theatrical event and I am not really quite—
Mrs Dunne: So he could say “get out of my way” just once more.
MS LE COUTEUR: Yes. Moving along again, let me talk on some of the issues that Mr Seselja raised. The Greens think it is very important in planning issues to get balance. Mr Seselja spoke quite eloquently about the need for jobs, which we do not have any problem with. We also think, though, that there is a need to make sure that what the jobs do is a productive thing to do. So we do not support the wholesale disassembling of our planning system. We must—
Mr Seselja: Nor would we.
MS LE COUTEUR: I am glad to hear that you do not either. We must be sure that we have the appropriate safeguards to make sure that what we build is not just moving sand—moving things from one place to another—but something that would be a lasting legacy of good planning in this territory.
Also on some of the issues that Mr Seselja raised, I might point out that the initial Greens response to this package from Mr Barr was that primarily there seems to be a problem with resources in ACTPLA. The obvious response to this was to employ some more people in ACTPLA, to second them from the private sector or whatever. I still stand by those comments as being one of the things that ACTPLA should seriously consider doing. I think we are all in agreement that DAs are not being processed fast enough, and that would seem to be one of the more obvious ways of solving this problem.
Getting back to the regulations themselves, negotiating these regulations has been a very interesting process over the last month. I do not want to talk too long about it but I will make a few comments. The Greens have always supported the federal government’s national building and jobs plan and the subsequent—
Mr Barr: That is true; you certainly have. The Liberals have not, but you certainly have.
MS LE COUTEUR: We have—and the subsequent funding that is going to come to the ACT through it. And, as has been made abundantly clear, the Greens will be supporting these regulations as tabled by the minister because we understand that the national time frames which the ACT government have to meet are very tight. More importantly, in the commonwealth government there is a requirement that the states and territories need to ensure that the design application and assessment processes are fast-tracked with minimal red tape. I see this activity as being at least partly to ensure that the government has ticked off on that requirement.
From the onset, the Greens have also been very clear that we do not think that the ACT government should throw out all the relevant regulations just to look as though we are fast-tracking. As a result of that, we have carefully examined each and every one of the regulations which will be changed. Since the first announcement was made
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