Page 1490 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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extremely busy. Many people have contacted my office to express concern about this and to find out exactly what can be done.
In addition, of late there has been a development application lodged to redevelop the old Jamison Inn site. The old Jamison Inn, for those not familiar with it, was a trading establishment for many years and it ceased trading I think about five years ago. It really is an eyesore as it currently stands. There are fears that squatters have been there and that other illegal activity does take place there on occasion.
I think the people in and around Jamison, namely those in Aranda, Macquarie and Cook but also shoppers that come from all over Belconnen and North Canberra, are very keen to see some redevelopment on that site. I think they are keen to see the potential boon to local industry and to the local retail industry that can come about through that kind of positive urban infill. Such positive infill can help make many other existing infrastructure and potential services such as public transport much more economical.
The concerns that have been raised with me about some of the changes proposed for that area are really about the scale of the changes and also primarily I think about the way in which these changes have come about. It is about consultation and that really is what the crux of the matter is here before us today. It is about how this government consults and how this government does communicate with people about their community. I think many people in Canberra are feeling this at the moment. I think a number of residents groups and community councils are discussing this on a regular basis and they are keen to know exactly what role the community plays when it comes to government decision making, whether it be about developments or proposed developments or the sale of land, master planning or indeed territory plan variations and the way the territory plan interacts with other planning mechanisms.
The fact is that there are many, many vagaries with the current mechanisms in place that bring about change here in the territory. You have ACTPLA, you have the LDA, you have Land and Property Services, you have TAMS getting involved, you have the Chief Minister’s Department getting involved, sometimes you have the EPA getting involved and you have other agencies getting involved. It is an extremely complex process and for the lay person who is keen to get involved in their community, it is extremely hard to do so when you have such a complex web of organisations to get your head around. It was that behemoth which many people in Jamison or concerned about Jamison confronted when they were keen to find out how they could bring about positive changes to their group centre and how they could actually have a real and tangible impact to make their community a better place.
As I said, many people have contacted my office to express concern about the current arrangements and I thought that the best thing to do would be to actually do what the government did not do and that was facilitate a public meeting for the entire community to attend. So a couple of weeks ago I letterboxed to I think about 3,000 houses a notice of a public meeting. We also put up posters at the Jamison Plaza. It was listed in the Chronicle as taking place. On 28 March at the Canberra Southern Cross Club at Jamison I hosted a public meeting with more than 225 people in attendance. I think that is a pretty extraordinary turnout. There would not be many
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