Page 1359 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 10 May 1994
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As well as that, in order to ensure that development in the ACT is absolutely the best in Australia, and to reinforce the development of those guidelines, I have established the Urban Design Advisory Committee, which will advise me and the Territory Planning Authority on best design. The matter that I have been focusing on now for three years is design. A large number of Canberra citizens want medium density living. We have to see that the design of medium density development is absolutely the best that is possible. It is also the case that the interests of the Canberra community are well served by greater densities. We cannot continue to face endlessly the invasion of open space that greenfields development brings us.
So, for a whole range of reasons, higher densities are important for Canberra. That being the case, we must ensure - and it has been my aim for three years - that the quality of design is the best possible. That is what is happening. Mr Cornwell, I am sure, will be pleased about that. He obviously knows what is happening, and we will see continuing improvement in design. For example, the step that the committee and the Government took towards a greater quality of solar design when he was not on the PDI Committee is a very important step. I am very proud of what has happened there, but it is only one measure of design.
FINANCIAL AGREEMENT BILL 1994
Debate resumed from 21 April 1994, on motion by Ms Follett:
That this Bill be agreed to in principle.
MR KAINE (4.03): Madam Speaker, the Opposition supports this Bill; but, in saying that, I would ask the Chief Minister whether she could clarify some aspects of it. It is a rather curious Bill in many respects, in that the Bill itself has only four clauses which are quite irrelevant. They are simply enabling clauses, but the financial agreement attached has 16 clauses and only one of those, in fact, is relevant to the ACT. That one is the one which, in effect, reconstitutes the Loan Council in a different form, and part of that reconstitution is to include the ACT and the Northern Territory as full members of it, which we were not previously.
The second thing that it does is to define the powers of this reconstituted Loan Council. Those powers are defined in clause 4 subclause (9). In summary, it provides the Loan Council with powers to make resolutions in relation to borrowings, raisings and other financial arrangements of public sector entities. In fact, that is what the accompanying explanatory memorandum says. The Chief Minister herself made no reference at all to these powers in her tabling speech. When you go to clause 4 subclause (9) of the Schedule, the statement is a rather curious one that I suggest needs some explanation. I read it:
The Loan Council may make resolutions ...
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