Page 1147 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 7 May 2014
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We understand what the priorities are. We understand what the challenges are. We understand what the challenges are. We understand where people might not be happy with the government and where they are not we look at how we can fix that. But the challenge for the opposition is to remain relevant in the next two years of this city. That is your challenge and part of it will be working with us to deliver for this city.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (10.32): Madam Speaker, it is an honour to speak in this chamber in support of Mr Hanson’s very worthy motion about ensuring that the Assembly concentrates on the things that really matter for Canberrans. We have a government at the moment that gets sidetracked with pet projects and allows ministers’ personal egos to run their agendas and therefore run the government and therefore abuse taxpayers’ funds.
I have a particular interest in numerous aspects of Mr Hanson’s motion, including dysfunctional planning, housing availability and a few of the other important ones such as road transport. However, a couple of points are worth making in response to the Chief Minister’s delusional rant about how good this government is with regard to consultation.
Nobody in Canberra outside those eight members opposite would say that the government is doing a good job when it comes to consulting with Canberrans. In fact, we saw this in black and white through the submissions that came to the planning committee over the last month and witnesses who presented to that committee. Someone who used to be in this chamber spoke about the government’s consultation. Ms Caroline Le Couteur notably said:
I do not think there has been sufficient public consultation on this bill … It is unfortunate as in the public mind it could well be taken as indicating how much attention … the government intends to pay to any public consultation about planning issues
Let us take the President of the Institute of Architects:
Taking account of the Easter and ANZAC Day public holidays there are only 11 working days between today and 6 May. In addition, the ACT School holidays occurred during this period (from Saturday 12 to Sunday 27 April) adding to the many Canberra residents who will be out of town.
For public input to be sought, the Committee must call for submissions, hear and consider evidence, and prepare its report all in a period of 11 working days. Given the importance of this matter, and the magnitude and complexity of draft legislation … this timeframe appears to be grossly inadequate.
A failure by the Committee to allow appropriate time for the preparation of submissions from interested parties makes the whole purpose of referring the matters to the Committee ingenuous and, engaging in public consultation impossible.
Mr Sinclair from the Planning Institute, the peak body in this space, said:
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