Page 2088 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2017
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I will not keep on going. It continues like this. This would be sort of Abbott and Costello-level comedy, if it were not so important. It is really disappointing to say the least. The discussion continued to be inconclusive and I must say that I am really concerned that in this instance, at the very least, the committee was confused. I certainly was confused. As answers given certainly appeared to be directly contradictory I think others were confused. And for our system of government to work, the executive has to provide accurate information to the legislature. It appears that this was not the case in this hearing and it appears that that may not have been the case in the previous annual reports hearing by the planning committee of the Eighth Assembly. At the very least it is confusing and disturbing.
There is another issue that has to do with the LDA’s land acquisitions. That is the LDA’s purchase of rural land to the west of Canberra. This, of course, is now also being investigated by the Auditor-General. I will confine my remarks basically to the broader planning implications rather than any issues about the process that they went through. The story appears to be that about the same time as the LDA’s incorrect—and, again, that is the Auditor-General’s word—acquisitions policy it started buying rural land to the west of the ACT.
It is very unclear what, if any, strategy was behind the purchases. The LDA was not clear about this. We asked them about consultation and there was zero consultation—that we do know—with the communities of Kambah, Weston Creek and Molonglo Valley as to whether or not they actually wanted to see 1,500 new households on the adjacent, what is now, rural land.
But the issue that I really want to focus on is just who is responsible for doing long-term planning in Canberra. It is supposed to be the planners in ACTPLA, EPSDD, but the message that we got from the hearing—and remember, of course, we did all of this in one day—was that EPSDD, CMTEDD and LDA are all doing strategic planning and they do not appear to be pulling in the same direction.
When I asked the LDA at the hearing why they bought this land, Mr Gordon of the LDA said, amongst other things:
It is zoned as broadacre. Typically, within the ACT there are areas of broadacre that are reserved as the city grows.
However, the land the LDA bought is not zoned broadacre. It is partly zoned rural and partly hills, ridges and buffers. These are not normally zones which are regarded as reserve for future growth. Later though, through a question on notice, the committee were told that this land is shown as a future urban area in the ACT planning strategy but when I looked it up it did not seem to be such. In fact, it is shown as being part of the western edge study area.
At that hearing I asked the Chief Planning Executive about the study. She said:
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