Page 887 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 9 March 2016
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economic, tourism, recreation and community opportunities for Tharwa’s long-term viability. Background studies have informed the planning process, including studies focused on infrastructure capacity and heritage significance. It is always, I think, valuable to do that kind of work as part of a process like this.
I am advised that the first phase of community and key stakeholder engagement for development of the Tharwa village plan commenced on 27 January and concluded on 26 February this year. It is reported to me that EPD staff facilitated two targeted workshops with the Tharwa community to investigate key issues and develop a shared community vision and strategies for Tharwa’s future during the four-week community engagement period.
The first community workshop on key issues for the village was held on Saturday, 6 February at the Tharwa public hall. Apparently 35 to 40 local residents attended from the village and surrounding rural properties. I understand that the workshop was well received and the community welcomed the opportunity to offer their thoughts for the village. The second community workshop on developing strategies for community initiated projects was held on Friday, 19 February and 35 local residents attended from the village and surrounding rural properties. I am told that comments received through the first phase of engagement are being used to prepare a draft village plan for Tharwa. I understand that the draft plan will be released in the coming months, with the final report being anticipated to be released later in 2016.
No doubt, there is a long way to go, and that is the nature of this process. It is a lot like the way the processes are done for shopping centre revamps. There is sort of an initial go-and-ask the broad questions and then come up with a draft, go back and test that with the community and then come up with a final. I have no doubt there are still different views. Certainly Mr Wall read out today some that were clearly not happy with some of the ideas that had been put forward. I think that is probably pretty natural at this stage in the process. I would urge the residents of Tharwa and surrounding areas to continue to be involved in the community consultation process.
The draft plan is due to come out soon. I guess the residents will get an opportunity to see whether the things they put forward and the vision they have has been reflected in that draft or not as the case may be. I suspect also that there will be some different views within the community. Of course, the challenge for government is to channel those perhaps divergent ideas of the future into a single, coherent strategy for a community which may have some different visions.
I will be supporting Minister Gentleman’s amendments today. I think it is a bit premature to be quite as negative on the process as Mr Wall has been. But there is plenty of distance to go on this and I am sure there will be some good, robust debates. There are more stages of the consultation to go. I will be very interested to hear how it goes from here because I know there is real passion for our rural villages, both within the villages themselves and across the ACT generally. There is a sense of nostalgia for the villages. I will be watching with interest both the draft plan and the community feedback on that.
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