Page 1726 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 6 June 2006
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the lines of “the committee suggests”. I do not think that is of great moment but I would just like to put that on the record.
That said, I concur with what Mr Gentleman said about the work of Hanna Jaireth on this one; I think she did a good job. I think it was a challenging one. It was a challenging report for the committee. I think it really brings us to the fact that we are going to see more and more tension around the development of group centres, town centres and local centres. This is going to happen more and more as infill occurs in Canberra. Places like the inner south I think are where the tension will be greatest, but I think it will go well beyond that.
I think what we saw and heard from residents were genuine concerns; some reasonable concerns about noise. But there is going to be the inherent tension about having people living close to these group centres. That raises broader planning implications for the government and for ACTPLA. I think they should look at this report closely, at how this variation has gone, and look at putting in place broader land use policies that maybe take account of some of these issues.
I think that, generally, the variation and this report recognise the need to strike a balance between the concerns of residents, the important legitimate commercial needs of centres to expand, and also the positive planning implications for the territory of having vibrant group centres, town centres and local centres. It strikes a balance. I think generally they have got it about right.
Ideally, we would not have apartments that are that close to commercial premises. I think that, if you had a blank slate, you probably would not have them within a few metres of the back of a cafe or a bar, but that is the way it has worked out. I think we need to work within that framework to try and protect the amenity of residents as best we can, and also to ensure the viability of our commercial centres and to ensure that they are able to grow.
One of the things that arose during our considerations was the problem of enforcement of noise management plans. Representatives of ACTPLA informed us that they certainly found it difficult, or that, if they had any ability to enforce noise management plans, they were not able to do that at this stage and that that was a responsibility for environment. We heard from them that the procedures at the moment are not streamlined enough for that to happen.
The residents’ concerns were that they were making complaints but that they were not being followed up. We were told by public servants that, if there were sufficient numbers of complaints, they would be investigated. I think that is something the government needs to take a closer look at—how noise complaints are dealt with in these circumstances—so we can ensure that residents are not adversely affected, that where they are adversely affected, they have some recourse, and that they are able to get some positive outcome that protects their standard of living.
The only other thing I want to comment on is recommendation 5, talking about the Human Rights Act. The opposition did not support the Human Rights Act but, nonetheless, it is the law of the territory. I think we are going to see more and more of the kind of arguments we made against it at the time. I think it will become a bit of a noose around the neck of government agencies.
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