Page 5746 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 6 December 2011
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
There are a number of potential ways of consulting which would be appropriate for different types of proposals. They include a neighbourhood letterbox drop, which would obviously need to cover as big an area as appropriate to the scale of the development; provision of email or phone contact details for feedback on the information distributed to the community; holding of community meetings, including meetings with the local community council and any other relevant community groups, to explain the development; hosting a community meeting as promoted in the letterbox drop; and combinations of the above.
It is important to get the scale of the consultation right to ensure that it is not, in fact, too onerous on the proponent while ensuring that the proponent has enough opportunities to hear a range of views from the community and members of the community feel they know what is happening where they live, where they shop and the areas that are important to them. I am very pleased that both developers and the community will be clear on the requirements for pre-DA consultation after this legislation has been passed.
Usually, as you know, the Greens are pretty dubious about supporting legislation when the supporting regulations or instruments are not yet available. However, in this case, it makes sense to improve the legislation now by making consultation mandatory and allowing a few months for appropriate guidelines to be developed in consultation with the community and developers. We look forward to seeing the final guidelines in a few months.
One change from the earlier drafts of this PABLAB is that the city and town centres were to have been excluded from this pre-DA consultation process. However, I am very pleased to see that this has been amended and that residents in these areas will now have the same consultation rights as residents in other parts of Canberra. However, I also note that this bill proposes a number of areas which should be exempt from needing pre-DA consultation as they are essentially greenfield areas. This seems fine at this stage, but I suggest that these areas would need to be revised regularly. I will be moving an amendment to that effect later today.
During the debate on the first PABLAB, I suggested that the level of notification on each development track be increased slightly as I consistently get feedback from the community about insufficient consultation and notification. In particular, one issue which the government has agreed needs improving is what I call the Arthur Dent situation. You may well all recall Arthur Dent, the main character in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. At the beginning he wakes up one morning to find the bulldozers are outside waiting to demolish his house to make room for a highway. Not only was his house being demolished, but the whole idea of the story was that Earth was being demolished to make way for an intergalactic space highway.
When Arthur asked the aliens why no-one on Earth had actually been notified, they responded by saying it had of course been in the galaxy notifications and that it was a pity that, unfortunately, earthlings did not really have access to these communication channels. Sadly, this is how many people in Canberra feel about a development or demolition in their neighbourhoods—they do not see them coming. When they ask
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video