Page 4242 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 20 November 1990
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mirrored by a bipartisan approach here in the ACT and in this Assembly. For the information of the Assembly, I seek leave to table a copy of the Special Premiers Conference communique.
Leave granted.
MR KAINE: I move:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
DEATH OF MR P. HARRISON
MR MOORE (3.21): Mr Speaker, I move:
That the Assembly expresses its deep regret at the death of Mr Peter Harrison and tenders its profound sympathy to his widow in her bereavement.
On Monday, 29 October, Peter Harrison suffered a severe stroke. Late in the afternoon of Tuesday, 30 October, he died in the Royal Canberra Hospital. I count myself lucky to have been with him during some of his last hours. However, I count myself even luckier to have been considered his friend, and it is that human side of Peter Harrison that I shall refer to later.
Peter Harrison was not only a man of vision but also a man of principle. With reference to that vision, he first saw Canberra in 1951 when it was a city of about 20,000 people. He came to Canberra in 1959 when it was a city of 38,000 people.
It is said that, after Walter Burley Griffin, Peter Harrison had more influence on the shape and character of Canberra than any other person. Some say that his plan was for a city of a quarter of a million people. Early in the 1960s when other people were trying to work out how to shape Canberra, Peter Harrison was trying to work out how to shape a city not of 50,000 people but of 250,000 people, and beyond.
His vision was not just for a city of a quarter of a million but a city that was expandable. The design that we know for Canberra, that we refer to as the Y plan was guided and driven by Peter Harrison. The concept of a series of decentralised town centres, discrete town centres, a decentralised system that other cities try to emulate, can be largely attributed to him. Also attributable to him and his team is that each of those town centres contains major employment centres, the road hierarchy as we know it in Canberra, and the flexibility of proper provision for transport, whether that transport be private or public.
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