Page 1934 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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MR SPEAKER: Yes, sure.
DR FOSKEY: I would like to do that, thank you.
MR SPEAKER: Of course you can speak.
DR FOSKEY: The clause that I am opposing is clause 42. We may be dealing with them all together; nonetheless, I will be speaking to this clause. By dint of the inclusion of “sustainable development” as one of the areas of expertise represented on the board of the Land Development Agency, I am hopeful that decisions of the LDA will, as a matter of course, take account of, or be reviewed in the light of the requirement to take account of, environmental impacts. However, there is no need for the LDA to consider the social impacts of its decisions. If the job of the LDA were merely to organise the sewerage and the kerbing for the development of new suburbs, that might not be such an issue. However, one of its functions is to carry out strategic or complex urban development projects.
The glorious, unsocial, upmarket lakeside developments of Kingston, plus the lack of acceptable public spaces and the poorly organised traffic flows of the Gungahlin town centre, combined with the escalating prices of affordable housing in Canberra, point to some of the problems that come from a failure to properly consider the social outcomes and planning decisions. I would have liked to have seen someone with social or cultural planning or with community development expertise on the LDA board. Sadly, only engineers and accountants are identified as having the essential skills.
I am not joining Mr Seselja in his opposition to all the clauses that relate to the LDA. I believe there possibly needs to be some sort of inquiry or other way of looking at the work of the LDA. We are constantly hearing claims from the opposition about the failure of the LDA. I take its criticisms with some scepticism, because it is very clear that the land development industry does not like the LDA. We need a more impartial assessment of its work before I am going to just go along with the opposition. Yakking at me while I am talking is hardly going to give me any reason to change my mind on that. That is the sort of spirit in which the opposition seems to approach this issue.
If we are going to have a Land Development Agency, which is, of course, an instrument of government—which is, perhaps, what the opposition does not like—it should have the full range of expertise. It should consider the social ramifications of planning. Why else have it if it does not in some way further the objectives of our community as reflected through the government it elects? I will not be joining Mr Seselja’s opposition to these provisions, but I have concerns about the Land Development Agency. If it is going to be a government instrument, we ought to make sure that it has the full range of expertise and that it does the job that it was set up to do. Perhaps we need to look at what that job was, and perhaps we need a broader inquiry that looks at the work of the Land Development Agency.
MR SPEAKER: I draw Dr Foskey’s attention to the fact that we will not be considering clause 42 separately. Leave has already been granted to consider clauses 30 to 44 together.
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