Page 241 - Week 01 - Thursday, 24 February 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
So Mr Willemsen, the developer, for whom everybody wants certainty, is in a bind. What does he do with this block of land, which he bought originally because he was given the impression that he could build a tower on it? What is he going to do with it? What Mr Willemsen could have done was to put a fence around it and do nothing. That is one option he had. He had another option.
Mr Moore: The Territory Plan showed him that he could not do that.
MR DE DOMENICO: Mr Moore talks about the Territory Plan. I will tell you what the other option was. Mr Willemsen would not have had to come anywhere near the Planning Committee or this Assembly if he had stuck on that block of land totally residential units, with not one public car park. The Minister will correct me if I am wrong. What Mr Willemsen said was this: "We have to look at Kingston in the overall context that it is an area that is enjoyed not just by the residents of Kingston but by the entire Canberra community". Those people who parked their cars on the Coles-Myer block prior to Mr Willemsen's purchase of it will have nowhere to park if Mr Willemsen either sticks a fence around it and does nothing or builds residential units and does not provide any public car spaces.
Mr Moore quite rightly said that, when things like that happen, it is up to members of this Assembly to make a decision about what is in the public interest. The committee has done that. Some people might find it odd that members of one political party on this committee have different points of view. I do not think that is strange at all. If more political parties had individual members who were allowed to have different points of view, how much better this place would be.
Mr Berry: Tony, you do not believe that.
MR DE DOMENICO: Keep reading your health stuff, mate. Do not get involved in the debate. You know nothing about it, as usual, so just keep out of it.
Much was said about the 1.26 block ratio of the Somerset and the 0.8 in the Territory Plan guidelines. I inform Mr Moore in particular that, if you take away the public car spaces from that development, the plot ratio would be less than the 0.8, in my opinion. I make the point that apparently it is okay for 1.26 instead of 0.8 over the road in the Somerset, as Mr Lamont said, but not okay for 1.54. Who is going to make that arbitrary decision? This Assembly will make the decision because this Assembly ultimately will ask: Has this committee really taken into account the public interest? Is that sufficient for this Assembly, the elected members, to give permission for this development to go ahead? For all those reasons, Madam Speaker, the Liberal Party will not be supporting Ms Szuty.
MR WOOD (Minister for Education and Training, Minister for the Arts and Minister for the Environment, Land and Planning) (11.12): Madam Speaker, I want to make a few comments. I appreciate the work the committee has put into this. It has been a fairly well-examined proposal and the history of it has been well stated. Ms Szuty made the point that she believed that there was no due process. That is simply not right. There was a process. Mr Willemsen proposed something that was beyond what is laid down in the
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .