Page 4283 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 25 October 2017
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The future development proposal for the site is still in a very formative stage. The proponent has not lodged a development application, nor has the proponent requested to vary the Territory Plan to vary the golf club lease. It is in its early days. The Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development Directorate offered to convene a community panel to facilitate community engagement about the proposal. This offer was willingly accepted by the proponent and a number of key stakeholder groups in the Red Hill area.
All too often I hear complaints that the community and stakeholder groups only have the opportunity to comment on development proposals at the formal statutory application stage. By this time many key decisions have been made. The intent of the community panel has been to provide key stakeholder groups with an opportunity to inform the development proposal rather than just respond to it.
The community panel process does not replace the formal consultation processes in any subsequent development applications, nor does it bind the panel participants or limit their opportunity to lodge public submissions on future development applications. In establishing the community panel, the directorates endeavour to bring all the right voices together by specifically inviting known stakeholder groups, including community councils, resident groups, environmental groups and non-government organisations such as the Council on the Ageing. Through the course of the panel process other organisations expressed interest and were welcomed to the panel. This included the Woden Valley Community Council.
Madam Speaker, the meetings were initiated by invitation. This was to ensure that key stakeholders’ voices could be heard. However, the meetings were not closed. Observers did attend and were welcomed. The meeting notes have been progressively placed on the ACT government have your say website, once agreed by panel members.
The terms of reference, which were agreed by the panel, are also publicly available on the ACT government have your say website. This includes a commitment to a three-month panel period starting on 3 August 2017, with the three-month period equating to three meetings. This allowed sufficient time to ensure that all of the right voices were heard, that all the right questions were asked and that those questions were answered and the answers were robust.
The panel discussions were comprehensive and reflected a broad range of interests. It became evident that many panel members had more to say than the meeting times would allow. Accordingly, panel members were invited to lodge further comments after each meeting. These additional comments have been attached to the respective meeting notes and are also publicly available on the ACT government website.
I turn now to some key factual issues in Ms Lawder’s motion. In relation to the motion’s item (1)(c), there is no formally designated area called the “Red Hill open space area”. The Federal Golf Club lease is not zoned open space or any similar term. It is included in the parks and recreational PRZ2 restricted access recreation zone under the Territory Plan. More importantly, the Federal Golf Club lease is zoned
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