Page 1906 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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were told. The only community bodies that this government now formally consults on planning matters are the community councils, where they exist; even then, this debate makes crystal clear that the government is prepared to ride roughshod over them.
We can see here that there are real weaknesses in the current practice of varying the territory plan. It could be argued that the new system, which is much lighter in terms of transparency and accountability, simply reflects the reality. But that is not the case. Things will only get worse.
I have here a letter from the community council to the planning minister which was sent in July, confirming council concerns regarding this variation and debunking some of the facile reassurances that had been offered to them in a meeting. I seek leave to table this letter.
Leave granted.
DR FOSKEY: I table the following letter:
Variation No 259 to the Territory Plan—Woden Town Centre: Commercial B—Changes to Precincts, Entertainment Accommodation and Leisure and Restricted Access Recreation Land Use Policies and All Town Centres—Changes to Appendix II and Commercial B Precinct “c”—Copy of letter to the Minister for Planning from the Chair, Woden Valley Community Council, dated 22 July 2007.
As Woden community council points out, the reassurances offered by the planning minister that there is scope to consider community need in the future will vanish once the new system is in place. I will come back to the Woden community council letter and read some of the detailed points, as they express the matters clearly and succinctly.
However, I will remind the Assembly once again that this final variation is significantly different from the draft variation over which there was considerable consultation. These matters have been raised more broadly only since I submitted my motion to reject the variation. Let it be clear that, if I had not moved to disallow this motion, the community of Woden would have been hit by these changes totally out of the blue. There has not been any reason given as to why the final variation is different from that over which the community was consulted. The very minimum requirement of community consultation is that you report to those people with whom you consulted in good faith and tell them why you have not taken their opinions into account.
So this final variation came as a surprise to the community council, and it still continues to surprise people in Woden who hear about it. It fails to provide protection to a number of land uses that were identified through the collaboratively developed and agreed Woden-Phillip master plan.
The big problem is not just the specific and inevitable loss of the bowling greens, the tennis courts, the gymnasium, the outdoor recreation area around the pool and the childcare centre—although these are big problems in the community when we are becoming increasingly concerned about obesity and when we are continually worried about people’s involvement in sport—but also the loss of land to cater for those
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