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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 14 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 4874 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

As I have pointed out, sometimes even people with planning qualifications can make errors in planning. Justice Stein's recommendation that planning qualifications be the only consideration will not always produce the sorts of outcomes that we want. That is not to say that I am not impressed and pleased with the way the Government has responded. They have clearly accepted that perhaps there was a gap in the range of qualifications and backgrounds of the people who did this work, and when the opportunity came up they filled it. That is an act of good faith within the spirit of Stein, whose recommendation this Government could have chosen to ignore. They could have put in plumbers. They could have put in teachers - you never know. It did not need the sorts of people that Stein recommended, yet we have seen within the last six months a level of acceptance of the sorts of criticism that Mr Stein threw up and the Government saying, "Okay. Maybe this thing is not working. Let us try to make it work".

In a scaremongering way, Mr Moore says, "How can we possibly face the future without a statutory planner? How dare you change the way we do it!". Instead of looking at it in that way, let us look at exactly what is being talked about. What is being talked about is putting together an administrative structure, with a senior level person with appropriate qualifications in charge of it, tasked to do the things laid out by legislation and spelt out in the Territory Plan, which then still have to go through exactly the same public processes as when we had a statutory planner. In that context, it does not look like the end of Canberra as we know it that Mr Moore suggested. I think that there are plenty of good objective reasons to support this piece of legislation.

MR MOORE (8.40): I think the Labor Party have missed the significance of having a planner. That is the point I was trying to make, rather than what Ms McRae said. As I said, we will have an incremental movement away from planning control. That is what I am concerned about.

Question put:

That the clause be agreed to.

The Assembly voted -

	AYES, 11		NOES, 3

Mr Berry	Ms McRae	Ms Horodny
Mr Cornwell	Ms Reilly	Mr Moore
Mr De Domenico	Mr Stefaniak	Ms Tucker
Mr Hird		Mr Whitecross
Mr Humphries	Mr Wood
Mr Kaine

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