Page 309 - Week 01 - Thursday, 16 February 2012
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Our position is that third-party appeals should not be a blanket thing—that anyone should be able to appeal against any development. We have argued long and hard in this place that there need to be reasonable restrictions on that. We lost that argument when the legislation was brought forward.
We also believe that, as a general rule, people who are directly affected by a development should have some ability to appeal. We sought with the drafters to find a way through that would achieve that policy outcome, but we were advised that that was not possible through this regulatory process—that we would need to amend the legislation, which is not possible through the process of consideration of this regulation.
In that case, we were faced with a choice between two somewhat less than ideal realities. In doing that, we therefore had to balance the views of the Property Council and others. The Property Council very strongly argued to us that they believed that the reg should be supported in its current form. We certainly heard from developers who were against the reg and who argued that we should be voting to disallow it. We considered their views. We heard from residents. I have got to say, though, that it was not many residents. There was not a particularly strong feeling coming from residents on the matter. We heard, as I said earlier, overwhelmingly from the arts community, saying to us that the arts precinct should not be covered by this regulation.
When we were considering these two less than ideal policy outcomes, the argument that was put most forcefully as to why we should support the regulation and not support the disallowance concerned the issue around the unique nature of Kingston foreshores, the heavily master-planned aspect of Kingston foreshores. It must be said that there is an argument in that, and a strong argument, that says that third-party appeal rights for Kingston foreshore are different from a situation in the suburbs where people have had standard residential and then are suddenly faced with the prospect of significant redevelopment of their street which changes the character and the nature of that neighbourhood.
Those were the competing arguments that were put to us. We have made the judgement that we will seek to balance these views—balance the views of the arts precinct, and consider the views of residents as well as the views of the various property interests that have a stake in this area.
We want to see development go ahead here. I think there is a responsibility on the government to make sure that that is done within the proper planning framework, within the territory plan. I think it is fair to say that the process in getting here has been less than ideal on the government’s part; that is something that is worthy of further consideration by the Assembly at some point.
But we had to make a decision based on the regulation in front of us. The compromise we have found between all of those competing interests will not please everyone, but we believe it strikes the best balance between the rights of the community and the needs of the community and the need to see this precinct developed and see it go ahead.
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