Page 4289 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 25 October 2017
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variations. They both have so far not achieved a level of community support where the government and the proponents have thought there is any point in going a lot further. There are also a large number of urban open space blocks of land in Garran, Hughes and Deakin, all of which abut the Red Hill nature reserve. I point out that we are joined by four local residents for this debate—thank you very much. Residents are concerned that if everything is done on a piecemeal basis, who knows what plans there are for this space?
Ms Lawder made a number of comments about the community panel process and she has quoted from similar emails to those I have had. It was really weird; Ms Lawder and I were both invited in our roles as members of the planning committee to attend this. It seemed quite bizarre because we were to attend at the end and hear just a summary and we were not given a chance to talk to or hear what other people said. I could only see that our role was to stand up and say, “Yes, the community has been in the same room as the developers and thus that qualifies as consultation.” I think probably a photograph would have done as much good as the role we were asked to play.
It actually got even worse. While we were meant to be invited to all of the panels, I am not aware that I got an invitation to the second. The third I was only invited to after I was part of an email chain which included people discussing the invitation and ACTPLA. I guess ACTPLA belatedly realised, “Oh, we haven’t bothered inviting the MLAs.” The community representatives were told to keep it in confidence, in good faith, which made it impossible, of course, for them to adequately represent the communities they are part of.
I obviously support the efforts of ACTPLA to better involve the community. I am not trying to be negative about the process; I am just saying that it was not adequate to do what it is trying to do. It is so bad that the six community group members of the panel—the Conservation Council, the Deakin Residents Association, the Friends of Grasslands, the Garran and Hughes Residents Action Group, the Hughes residents association, and the Red Hill Regenerators—were so concerned that they wrote a document including their views, which I understand was sent to the ACT government and all Murrumbidgee and Kurrajong MLAs.
A lot of what I have said is informed by that document. It states:
The Red Hill area is now faced with two very large residential developments which will have a wide range of environmental and social impacts on the open space area. There is every possibility that further damaging developments and activities will be proposed in the future. This is a recipe for disaster in this sensitive and significant landscape. If these proposals are dealt with on a case by case basis it will be planning by development rather than development through planning. For this situation to be avoided an overarching planning and management framework needs to be developed and implemented.
My amendment is an attempt to develop and implement that management framework, given the lack of support from ACTPLA to make it happen and given that it has not happened in the 30 years of this saga.
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