Page 5360 - Week 14 - Thursday, 30 November 2017
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so that people can walk through the brick wall without using magic. That will help in the short run, while, hopefully, in the slightly longer run, the playground is upgraded.
I would now like to move to the petitions about Red Hill. I am very pleased to present today the biggest petition this Assembly has had to date. Totalling up the two petitions, there are 3,112 signatures. They are from local residents, and they are all saying that they are really concerned about the proposed developments on or near Red Hill. There is the Federal Golf Club proposal and there is the proposal on Kent Street, next to the Telstra exchange.
It is really concerning to look at this, because once upon a time Canberra used to be a planned city. We had the NCDC and then we had ACTPLA, and they were doing the long-range planning for Canberra. What we have here is planning being done by individual developers on the basis of what they have available to them. This is not how we should plan Canberra.
This is why the motion which Ms Lawder moved, and I amended, talked about integrated development for this part of Red Hill. We need it to be integrated so that it protects the really important values of Red Hill nature reserve. It has critically endangered yellow box woodlands on it. I think it is clear that the people of Canberra want to see us continue to be a bush capital. Part of that is having places like Red Hill that we can all go to and enjoy. Even more important than us going and enjoying it are the native inhabitants living there.
As well as Red Hill, though, it is really important that the amenity of the local area is respected and not degraded. Deakin, Hughes and Garran are suburbs that will be significantly impacted by these proposed developments. The traffic system in those suburbs was not designed for this. There are some potentially pretty nasty options. One potential option with the potential development at the golf course could be that we will end up with a road that goes over Red Hill into Garran, so that we would have a great, new little rat run.
These are the sorts of things that we need a professional planning authority to look at and work out a master plan for this area, so that we do not have a series of potentially inappropriate developments. I know there was a community panel process, but this community panel basically just got to look at a proposal put forward by one developer. This is not how planning should happen in Canberra.
I am really pleased that the community did all of this work in a fairly short period of time and put together the Assembly’s biggest petition to date on this subject. I think it is a very important one, not only for the people of Murrumbidgee and the people who will be directly affected, but for the people of Canberra as a whole. It is about protecting our status as a bush capital and standing up for good planning, not having Canberra being run by developers.
Torrens shops playground—petition 31-17
MR STEEL (Murrumbidgee) (10.13), by leave: Today I want to acknowledge the community petition regarding improvements and increased accessibility to Torrens
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