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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 4435 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

Mrs Dunne said an independent ACT Planning and Land Authority would not make any difference, would not deliver any improved changes and she opposed it outright from the beginning-more negativity from the Liberal Party-but it is an election promise delivered.

We abolished the position of the Commissioner for Land and Planning, streamlining the decision-making process by removing that unnecessary step between decision making by the planning agency and review by an independent tribunal-another election promise delivered.

For the first time in 30 years, we initiated the first long-term strategic plan for the future growth and development of our city. We sat down and did, for the first time in 30 years, a complete examination of how our city should grow and develop into the future. We do not want to rely on a plan devised in the 1950s for the community and society of the 1950s: we want to rely on a plan which is relevant to the demands and the needs of our community today and into the future. That is what the draft Canberra Spatial Plan tries to do.

No plan is perfect. All plans will require modification in the future. However, we have set in place a framework which, for the first time, attempts to establish a consolidated city that will help us address the incredible issue of energy use-the impact of energy use on the greenhouse effect-the issue of greater housing choice, and the issue of new places and new opportunities in which Canberrans, now and in the future, can live, work and play. This is work never done by those opposite.

At a neighbourhood and suburban level, we introduced significant reforms to the way development and redevelopment should occur in our neighbourhoods. We implemented the 5 per cent limit on dual and triple occupancy development, as promised during the election. We have protected Canberra's garden city character through variation 200 to the Territory Plan, which makes provisions for increased private open space in backyards, introduces stronger development and plot ratio controls, prohibits dual occupancy development in the majority of most suburbs, and encourages strategic redevelopment around local centres and other key nodes. That is an integrated and strategic approach to improving planning in our city.

We have done more than that, too. We have introduced a new process to completely audit and protect Canberra's open spaces and we are still moving to ensure that, at the next election, there will be a referendum on entrenching Canberra's open spaces against development in the Territory Plan.

Of course, the government has introduced the public land development, an incredibly popular move, a move which has been welcomed by hundreds and hundreds of Canberrans. Canberrans who want the block of their choice and the builder of their choice without being gazumped, without the prices being pushed up through artificial bidding, and without having to accept the house that has already been built on the block. Public land development is about better returns to the community, better choice for the community and better management of our land asset.

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