Page 4196 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 23 October 2019
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MS LE COUTEUR: Well, that was one of the more interesting contributions to this debate.
Minister Gentleman, I am flattered by your views as to how much I influenced DV306. It took the best part of a couple of years of my life here in the Assembly; that was an awful lot of work for a poor crossbencher to try to get my head around. The minister is correct that the development industry have found ways to get around the intent of that, but they have a lot more resources than I had, although probably not as many as ACTPLA.
I point out that I was not a drafter of 306; I was merely someone trying very hard—and I continue to try very hard—to have a planning system which encourages good passive solar design. We need that, and I regret the things in the planning system that do not encourage it. This is part of the reason I am moving this motion: so that we learn from the things that have not worked.
I was disappointed that Minister Gentleman did not bother addressing the issues of Molonglo; he only talked about the general issues of Canberra. Part of the problem in how we are doing development and how we review our planning rules is that we have to look at things happening on the ground in Canberra. In an earlier discussion there was a suggestion that all the mistakes in Wright and Coombs have been learnt from and so why should we be doing this. But my office—ably assisted by a couple of interns; I am not sure what university they were from—looked at the block layout in Denman Prospect and found that it is not optimised for solar passivity. These are not problems of 10 years ago; these are problems we are creating now.
I thank Mrs Jones for her elaboration on my theme. I apologise; I should have mentioned the small shop in Coombs. There is now a small shop and the owner does an excellent job. I have bought some of his takeaway, so good point. I also thank Mrs Jones for mentioning the Coombs peninsula. The planning committee is on the side of the residents of Coombs with this and I just hope that the government will be on the same side as well.
I was disappointed that Ms Cody clearly did not bother listening to my speech. I pointed out that there was excellent bus patronage in the first parts of Coombs and Wright because that was part of our agreement. That is one of the things that we as a government, I guess, got right and that we pushed for to get right in Wright and Coombs.
Mr Parton: “We as a government”? Are you part of the government?
MS LE COUTEUR: “We as a part of the government”—I get confused about how I should describe that, but you know what I mean. As a result of the parliamentary agreement of the Seventh Assembly the government provided bus services from the beginning in Wright and Coombs. As I pointed out and as Ms Cody pointed out, that has led to excellent bus patronage in the initial parts of those developments. However, my disappointment is this: there is no commitment from the government to do this for the newer parts of Molonglo. It is not excellence in sustainable design and it is not living up to the commitments of the Seventh Assembly.
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