Page 5617 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 17 November 2010
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some time and government resources to conduct good consultation and technical planning resources if we are to create good master plans which will guide development in the future. We need to look at which areas of the ACT need master planning first. We need to look at the problems and the opportunities. That is why we have called upon the government to make a priority list.
While I believe that long-term planning is fundamentally a political process insofar as our plans reflect our objectives, our priorities and even our dreams, I do not think having debates about which area of Canberra is most in need of a master plan advances the debate. It just politicises it. It seems that in the Liberals’ view of planning the way to get planning action is by getting your local member to move individual motions on the floor of the Assembly. This is not how we should run a planning system.
We cannot take the politics out of planning, but we should put our political effort, our political pressure, towards higher aims. We should not be using politics to potentially pit one suburb against another in a political race to get a master plan. The politics that we should be discussing in planning are issues like housing affordability, the impact of peak oil, climate change, the ACT’s ecological footprint, which is four times the world’s average, our ageing population, how to engage and to bring all the people of Canberra along with the planning system in the inevitable changes to Canberra over the next 10, 20, 30 years.
The government, after community consultation, is due to report back to the Assembly with this priority list for master plans in June 2011. I think we should go through the process which we have as an Assembly already agreed to. That process of consultation and prioritisation is already generating discussion. Community councils and residents’ groups from different parts of Canberra have contacted me and pointed out the various needs of their own areas.
We have people from all over Canberra—Dickson, Chifley, Griffith, Woden, Wanniassa, Hawker and even my own suburb of Downer—all raising concerns about changes in their suburbs. I will not attempt to list all the suburbs where I have had representations about the need for more planning in this because, quite frankly, it is most suburbs of Canberra, especially those in the older suburbs of the inner north and the inner south.
Now that Mr Hanson has raised the real issues of Weston Creek I hope that he will be happy to see the government and the Assembly go through the process which was decided on in August. I look forward very much to seeing the list in June next year.
Motion (by Ms Burch) put:
That debate be adjourned.
The Assembly voted—
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