Page 1210 - Week 04 - Thursday, 21 March 2013
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But schools are not consistent with commercial sites or town centres. They are often in the very heart of our suburbs. So it is not reasonable to treat them in the same way that we treat developments in commercial zones—where there are not residents, as a general rule. We believe that protecting our suburbs, and protecting people’s enjoyment of our suburbs, is something that is reasonable. Let me go back to the rationale that was put to us in 2009. Mr Barr had this to say:
So the clear message here is that, by ensuring that these regulations are not disallowed, by sending a clear message to all stakeholders in the education sector and the building and construction sector, we will be able to get on with the delivery of $230 million worth of investment in our schools.
That was the reason put forward for exempting certain developments, for taking away the rights of residents to be able to object to certain developments.
Ms Le Couteur had this to say on behalf of the Greens:
We would have preferred to link this regulation more closely to the commonwealth funding package, but the government thought it would be easier to apply it broadly to all schools in the ACT for four years.
I had a number of things to say as well. Firstly, I made the point that it is a recognition of the cumbersome nature of much of our planning system. I made the point that if you are going to make these kinds of changes here, if they are good enough here, you should be looking more broadly at what kind of reforms are needed to make the system work better. I think that simply isolating schools and saying that even in the heart of our suburbs there should not be any appeals, there should not have to be a development application process, would cause many Canberrans concern. I think many people living near schools in the ACT would be concerned that the government is seeking to permanently take those appeal rights away.
Many would have agreed with the justification a few years ago, of getting money spent quickly. We can argue about how quickly that money was spent. We can argue about the merits of much of that scheme and how well it was delivered. But I think many people would have accepted that for a temporary period it was reasonable to change the rules. What we are now seeing is an attempt to make that permanent, and we have concerns about that.
It is interesting to go back to what the Greens had to say at the time. Ms Le Couteur said:
… we do not want to see piecemeal changes to the planning system—bit by bit—which amount to basically amending the planning legislation by stealth.
I think it is fair to say that that is exactly what is happening here—what will happen should this pass today.
I go back to the point that I made earlier. I reflect on the debate we had some years ago in this place when major changes to the planning legislation were made. We had a
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