Page 3125 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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could not actually point to any specific part of the article as being fictitious. It is all well and good not to like an article, but if you are going to make those claims you should point out where it is incorrect. It appeared, from evidence given to the committee by the minister, that it was the vibe of the article that was wrong, in his opinion, rather than any of the specific claims which were made.
We know that there has been significant delay in section 63. We know that there was a major planning failure in relation to section 63. We were obviously concerned at the time when that was revealed, and we look forward to the resolution of this. The committee recommended that in the June sittings the Minister for Planning provide the Assembly with a report on how the issues concerning section 63 in Civic have been addressed.
There are a number of other issues I would like to touch on briefly. Going through and looking at the concerns that industry have put to us and what we want to see in terms of a response to that in this budget, I think the roughly $1 million one-off injection will make a difference—we hope it will make a difference—if it is used in the right way.
It is concerning, though, moving forward. We are being told that this is to clear the backlog, which is very important, but what will happen in an ongoing way to ensure that we do not see these kinds of backlogs developing again? I do not believe that it is all as a result of the change to the new planning system. I think there is still a significant view in industry that—I think I acknowledged this during the hearings—there have been some improvements in ACTPLA over the last couple of years but that there are still significant cultural issues which affect the ability of industry to get things through the system in a timely manner. I do not think that in the last few years in government there has ever been the will to try and address that.
I know that from time to time the Chief Minister, through David Dawes and the major projects unit, likes to take an interest in these things. (Second speaking period taken.) I know that from time to time through the major projects unit there is an acknowledgement that they need to try and fast-track things—sometimes with success; at other times not with so much success, as we saw with the power station. It reflects that the government is perhaps finally waking up to some of the economic importance of our planning system, but we have not seen the will to actually make some of the cultural changes that we believe are necessary to get things done. This morning I mentioned the minister coming on board with some of our policies in terms of targeting the resources in ACTPLA where they are needed to deal with development applications; some of the $1 million is, I suppose, an extension of that.
Ms Le Couteur talked a bit about solar access to blocks; it was a focus for Ms Le Couteur and some others in the committee, both with ACTPLA and also with the LDA. That is a critically important issue. It is one of the simplest ways we can make our homes more energy efficient. In the committee, we took on board the questions about yield. That always needs to be a very important consideration, but perhaps what is colouring a bit of this debate between the issue of yield for blocks and the issue of solar access is the obsession with new urbanism. There needs to be a little more flexibility in the way we design our subdivisions if we are going to get the
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