Page 2131 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 2020
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hostage by the Greens on many fronts. And when you have a political gun to your head you will say whatever the kidnapper wants you to say to stop them from pulling the trigger.
We cannot support this clause. I would love to have been a fly on the wall at that closed-door discussion between Mr Barr and Mr Rattenbury to be honest. If ever you needed a reason as to why you would not install a fringe political group as a member of your cabinet, I would suggest that some of these clauses are very good reason.
We cannot support this clause. At a time when construction is facing a major crisis, even though this clause greatly waters down the original Greens clauses in this space, we see no need to impose this new bureaucratic layer for many developments in the ACT, particularly because this bureaucratic layer will not be in place in other jurisdictions. Again, I get back to that whole construction pipeline issue that now would not be the time to be adding those layers.
The development of these greenhouse gas emissions statements will add a cost to many projects in the ACT. And as there is no action attached to those statements as portrayed by Ms Le Couteur, as there is no actual outcome from providing the information, we would ask what the point is. I think we all know what the point is—it is a political point. It is about flexing Green muscle, and I do not think now is the time to do it. At a time when we should be bending over backwards to encourage construction in the ACT, it is not the time to be flexing environmental muscles and passing a law which makes construction more difficult and more expensive.
Amendment agreed to.
Proposed new clauses 14A and 14B agreed to.
Clause 15.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.25): I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 4 at page 2164]. One of the community’s most common complaints is that development applications alter substantially after public notification. This means what the public thinks they are looking at is not actually what is built. As you can imagine, that is incredibly annoying—that is the polite description of the views of the public about this.
One of the ways this happens is through the misuse of the further information process. The developer submits plans and important and controversial details are missing. The plans go out to the community as is because, of course, the directorate does not actually start assessment until consultation is finished. The plans are fairly benign, vanilla, and so there are no objections. Once the directorate starts the assessment it sees the gaps and it asks the developer for further information. This further information comes in and so it becomes clear that the development application is much less benign but there is no further consultation and so the developer has successfully bent the system.
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