Page 6020 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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are very, very likely to affect Tralee. There are clearly, as Mr Rattenbury dealt with, long-term health issues for any potential residents in Tralee and we should not in all conscience agree to a development where there will be these sorts of long-term health issues.
But we also need to look at the long-term issues for Canberra, and this is the area where members of the opposition have provided some useful commentary. We do not want to see airport noise being spread more onto the rest of the ACT as a result of the development in Tralee. I think this is probably the one thing that members of this Assembly are all in agreement on. We do not want more aircraft noise as a result of the development at Tralee, and obviously the simplest way to achieve that is not to have the development at Tralee.
I guess the other point I would make about the airport is that, apart from the aviation impact from the planning of Canberra, which has been quite significant, it is very arguable that had the airport not developed as it did we would have a vastly better development in Gungahlin; we would actually have employment in Gungahlin. So there are a lot of issues with the airport. But, as I said, it is not going anywhere any time soon so we must plan around the existing reality of this very important part of our infrastructure.
The second issue is a bigger issue. Tralee is right next to the ACT. I really wish in this debate that we actually had a map of Canberra here because it is really frustrating to have planning debates without a map. I just like maps I guess you could say.
Mr Barr: Spoken like a true planning nerd.
MS LE COUTEUR: Yes. If we had a map of Canberra we would see that Tralee is next to Hume, and Hume, as we all know, is one of Canberra’s industrial areas. And it is a developing industrial area—and developing industrial areas are going to be developing areas that have more noise and potentially more noxious emissions. We have an industrial area for a reason: we do not want to have it next to a residential area. So it is a real pity that we have two planning authorities divided by a line—not in the sand, not even on the road—approximately where the railway is, that divides one jurisdiction from the other. Because of that, we are not planning for both at the same time.
I would like, particularly in this context, to draw the Assembly’s attention to paragraph 4(b) of Mr Rattenbury’s motion, which calls for the establishment of a commission with membership from the ACT, New South Wales and the commonwealth to look at planning from a cross-jurisdictional point of view. This is what we should be doing.
Canberra is a part of a region. We cannot pretend that we are an island unto ourselves. Equally, Queanbeyan is part of a region and it cannot pretend that Canberra is not next to it. We have a symbiotic relationship between the two of us and we should be planning like that.
This is of course particularly important from the point of view of transport. One of my biggest concerns, apart from the noise issues of Tralee, is transport, and particularly
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