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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 1085 ..

MR HARGREAVES (continuing):

The section master plans give unfettered access to developers to build what they like on the block. They also give unfettered powers to the minister, with no appeal, as my colleague Mr Corbell said. We have had cause for concern in this house in the past about the use of the minister's call-in powers. We are unsatisfied that these call-in powers have been used responsibly. This proposal on the part of the government gives the minister unfettered powers. I wish to voice my opposition to such unfettered powers.

Mrs Burke said in her speech that this provides transparent, accountable and consultative processes. If I have left out one word or got one wrong, then I am sorry about that. She said that these plans need to be explained. I could not agree more. In fact, that was the very point Mr Corbell was making. The consultative process was not done quite correctly and quite appropriately. If Mrs Burke believes that that is the case, she will support Mr Corbell's call for the community panel to advise the government and this Assembly on what should happen with respect to this proposal on the part of the government.

As Mr Corbell said, these changes do not add clarity for developers. The people who have consulted my colleague have voiced their confusion about what they must and must not do. The developers do not know what is going on; we do not know what is going on; and I suspect, if the track record is any indication, PALM do not know what is going on.

Mr Corbell proposes that this process not proceed tomorrow; that we go back and we consult with the stakeholders. His proposed community panel would allow consultation with all the people affected. That is a fair process.

This proposal on the part of the government, as Mr Corbell said, is the most significant change to planning processes since the Territory Plan was introduced in 1994. The government has published its consultation policy. Yet we see evidence that the consultation process is a bit lacking. Certainly I acknowledge that there will have been some consultation on the part of the government. What I am saying is that it is a mere drop in the bucket. I believe Mr Corbell to be correct when he says we have a minister who is determined to push this thing through. There will be one only beneficiary if this thing goes through, and that will be the developers who have taken part in the consultation process with this minister.

Those developers who are confused clearly have not taken part in the consultation process. The residents of the historic suburbs, the Griffith, Yarralumla, Turner, O'Connor, Forrest, Narrabundah and Red Hill clearly have not been involved in the consultation process. If you allow it to go on in those suburbs, it will then encroach into Hackett and Downer and those suburbs which came to pass in the 1940s and 1950s. They will be next and it will just roll on.

The Labor Party is asking the government to stop for a second or two and create the community panel. The government did that in respect to the prison project. It got all of the stakeholders together and said, "You tell us." Mr Corbell's motion is saying that this Assembly does not have the confidence that the minister has performed the consultation process quite properly, to its completion, to the satisfaction of those people most affected. It does not trust him to take that consultation process on board. He says he has consulted, but he has not said what that consultation process revealed and what the government's reaction to comments was.

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