Page 3919 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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There are so many different views on these issues. The industry associations have views. The community councils are funded to do this sort of thing as well. It cannot all be the Planning and Land Authority. It cannot all be the planning minister. We all have responsibilities, as members of this place, to have these discussions. I know we all take them seriously. I know Ms Le Couteur does particularly. And she will, I am sure, be discussing these issues broadly amongst her networks, just as the shadow planning minister will be, just as I am and just as all members who take an interest will be.
But to suggest, through these motions and making such sweeping statements, there is no systemic process, when we have a Planning and Development Act, we have an Assembly planning committee and we have all of these legislatives processes that we all agree on and that set in train all of the consultation mechanisms, is wrong. In some regards, for some people who engage at each stage in the process, there is this raising of eyebrows and sighing, “You are not back again, are you, wanting our views again?” Some people engage at such a detailed level that they, in the end, I think, find the pace of the process so slow that it drives them to frustration. They come and say, “You never do anything. Everything takes so long.”
Then this afternoon we had a speech and a motion in front of it that says we are not doing enough on 301 and 303. Okay, fair cop! I am the minister. Everyone is going to have a bit of a go. That is life. You get used to that. I will take it on board. I know this motion will pass today. I know it will pass this afternoon. I know it will pass. I will do my best to try to get a little bit more grunt into 301 and 303. I have made some public comments. I have undertaken some further work on this one. There will be further debates about that. That is paragraph (2)(e)(i), Ms Le Couteur.
In terms of master plans and precinct plans, again, I think from this debate this afternoon we generally agree on what we are talking about. I think there is probably a little disagreement over just how localised “local” is. As I say, even within my suburb of Dickson, within the neighbourhood master planning process from seven years ago, there were five different sub-precincts within the suburb of Dickson. So, how local is “local”?
There are some issues that I think we have in common, that are city wide and that, if you are ever going to get anything done in planning, you must adopt some city-wide principles. I do not think, for example, that Ms Le Couteur would be advocating that we have a street-by-street approach to solar access and we have a different set of planning rules in every suburb. I presume you are wanting a territory-wide response to that.
Are we going to consult street by street? Are we going to have a precinct code for solar access? Are we going to have a precinct code for building performance? No, we try to do some of these things at a city-wide level. I know there are tensions between the two. I read the front page of the Chronicle, like everyone else. I recognise that there are some issues. But my response is there will always be some issues. We strive to get the policy settings right. I think the best approach is to go territory wide, trying to recognise, as much as possible though, that there are some local variations.
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