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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 8 Hansard (19 August) . . Page.. 2742 ..

MRS DUNNE (continuing):

we will be in here again, undoing what has been done by this minister in a loose coalition to thrust through something which he says is his own idea. He made a commitment to preserving the garden city but, in his attempt to preserve it, he has blundered along in a way that will mean the downfall of many others.

I refer you to recommendations 4, 6, 8 and 10 of the Planning and Environment Committee-and especially No 2, which says, "Don't proceed with Draft Variation 200"and No 1, which says what you do to preserve the garden city elements of Canberra.

After this what happened? The minister decided that he must have his own way, and he lived up to what he says is a throwaway line about how the Planning and Environment Committee had better get used to being ignored. He ignored everything-with one exception. He basically said it was too difficult and you would have to go back to tors and start again and, if you did not do anything, the whole world would come to an end.

Enter Ms Tucker and the Greens. Ms Tucker and the Greens like to talk about process. They like to give the impression that they place the community's wishes above all else. But what did Ms Tucker and the Greens do? You have to remember that, of all the groups and individuals in this Assembly, Ms Tucker and the Greens were the only ones who were not formally involved in the draft variation 200 process. At the end, I asked the question: did Ms Tucker sit down and read the 700 submissions before she did a deal with the government? I think not.

There was a narrow ideology-there were people who wanted one particular thing to happen-and Ms Tucker thought that she could broker a deal. But she did not think about the long-term impacts, the unintended consequences or the collateral damage. I would like to give a couple of examples of things that will go wrong if we introduce a one-size-fits-all draft variation 200.

A constituent who is building a house in Nicholls approached me because he is building a swimming pool in his backyard. It is not an ordinary swimming pool: he is enclosing that swimming pool. So that swimming pool ceases to be private open space and becomes part of the building. As a result of building a roof over his swimming pool, he exceeds the allowable plot ratio by 1 per cent and cannot build his home. Ms Tucker may not be interested in people in Nicholls with covered swimming pools, but they are still constituents and people with needs. This man may have someone who has chronic asthma in his family, and a swimming pool may be a health issue.

Let's look at some of the other people. Two generations of a family in Chapman who were affected by the fires contacted me. They decided they would consolidate their residences on one block so as to provide appropriate retirement accommodation for ageing parents. They did not plan to build a grand house. The footprint was not much bigger than the previous footprint of the house in Chapman that was there. But it was bigger, and it exceeds the plot ratio.

They cannot build appropriate retirement accommodation for their aged parents on the block, where two generations will be living-so there would be three generations of family living together on one block. We talk about building social capital and

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