Page 4718 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 10 November 2009
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completed which leads the way for $100,000 salaries for the best classroom teachers. The idea here is simple: not performance pay, but merit promotion. Seniority out, merit in. Not everyone will earn more, but catching up with how other professions pay means catching up with how other professions promote. It is the only way we will get top salaries for top teachers.
Madam Deputy Speaker, 2009 has also been a year in which the government has delivered much for children and young people. My friend and now ministerial colleague Ms Burch takes on the children and youth portfolio, on which she will report to the Assembly later in this debate. But for myself, I would like only to record my thanks to the management and staff of the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services and, in particular, the Office for Children, Youth and Family Support, who serve the people of Canberra well—thank you.
Good planning policy is all about balance, meeting the challenge of climate change, supporting economic growth and including the community in decision making. This is the only way to maintain balance for the long term. Keeping politics out of planning is our firm commitment. So let me touch on two key areas—case studies, almost—of our approach in the last 12 months. In October last year, we committed to new master plans for the Kingston and Dickson group centres. The extensive community and business consultation processes have now been completed, and a planning report is to be available by the end of the year. Draft master plans are to be released early in the new year. These plans will provide a long-term blueprint that reflects the community’s needs, including those of local business.
The global financial crisis demanded decisive action from all governments. This year, our simpler, faster and more effective planning system was part of the solution. Following the election last year, as the size of the threat unfolded, the government sat down with industry. The idea: to listen to their concerns and work together to respond to the economic crisis by cutting planning red tape. One of the results was the joint effort towards the development of ACTPLAn. We have redeployed staff to clear backlogs of development applications, assigned more expert staff to ACTPLA’s shopfronts to help people lodge applications, and provided more flexible assessment and approval of run-of-the-mill applications and changes to the territory plan.
Now almost one-third of single dwelling development applications are more quickly assessed. We have also invested with the commonwealth to deliver e-development, and this new system now sees more than 40 per cent of development applications lodged electronically. We further streamlined the planning system to ensure every ACT school could make the most of federal Labor’s historic building the education revolution package. Between Christmas last year and the end of last month, I can report that ACTPLA assessed and approved nearly 1,500 merit track development applications with an estimated value of $1 billion. A simpler, faster and more effective planning system.
In the time remaining, I would like to talk briefly about tourism, sport and recreation. We went to the election promising a new autumn tourism event, and I am delighted to report that this year we have forged an alliance with the National Gallery of Australia that will see the first event to be an absolute blockbuster. Masterpieces from Paris
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