Page 729 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 July 1989
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years, actually fought to retain it at least for a short while.
When I look back to those days of that sort of consultation, it is of interest to note that the people who were there from the political parties around me were Bob Winnel, who was last on the Liberal ticket, and Greg Cornwell, who just missed out. Also present from the Labor Party was its eleventh candidate, Barry Reid, who obviously put much too much time into the community work and not enough time into his Labor Party factions and numbers to be able to get an appropriate position.
The background that we are dealing with is that of the courts where people from Torrens, the Conservation Council, Reid and Braddon attempted to fight the planning decisions that went against them. We also used a technique of using the Federal Parliament, and on two separate occasions I myself appeared before joint parliamentary committees on the ACT.
We used a change to the city plan as an attempt to try to defend what we perceived to be a planning decision that was going to go against us. In other words, we either had a choice of the courts, which cost quite a number of people money, or Federal Parliament. Both of those proved inadequate and, as you will be aware, people actually started small demonstrations on the streets followed by larger demonstrations, which led to our involvement and our formation of the Residents Rally.
One of the most important aspects, as far as the planning decisions went, were the heritage characteristics of Reid. We sought to protect those heritage characteristics in Reid, Braddon, Ainslie and Forrest. Later we saw what happened in Barton when a decision was made in court, and I have with me the Canberra Times article about that, but we all remember it well. The court decision that delayed the destruction of the Barton house was a very expensive exercise for the Barton Residents Association. It was not an accessible or cheap method of planning decision appeals. (Quorum formed)
With reference to the development of Civic, the residents of the inner city areas attempted to appeal decisions. The first related to the White Industries complex, the one that we are in at the moment; there were the decisions that affected Braddon and Turner; and later the section 38, 53 and part 56 development, the one that is currently being built and spans Ainslie Avenue.
The only chance we had to appeal that was that that particular development required a change in the Canberra plan and at that stage went to a joint committee which later became the Senate Standing Committee on Transport, Communications and Infrastructure. The result of the appeals that went to that committee brought about, first of all, the Neutze report and then the report of that standing
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