Page 1205 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 23 March 2010
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A related recommendation is:
The Committee recommends that future planning for major road projects should include … likely changes to greenhouse gas emissions generated from traffic.
The reason the committee made that recommendation was related to the government’s website about the proposed Majura Parkway where it was claimed that this would lead to a net reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, which I suppose could be true but which, on the face of it, is unlikely to be true as virtually every other road improvement in the world has been followed by increased use of the road. This may be a unique road but we felt that it was important that when we plan new roads we actually look at these issues.
With regard to the heritage recommendation, I note that the government is doing some work on that, according to the press.
I will move on to the issues which Ms Porter dealt with about the consultation and the issues relating to Green Square. First, this is one of the areas where, again, I felt a great feeling of deja vu. We talked about Green Square last year. We had exactly the same discussion about Green Square and still it seems that the community wants something that the government does not want to provide. It is not managing to explain this well for the community.
Recommendation 9 is talking about better coordination between TAMS consultation and ACTPLA consultation. I was the committee member who attended some of the consultation. I am also aware of various constituents who have. It would seem that the ACTPLA consultation was on the basis that there were a range of possibilities for Green Square whereas previously in the TAMS consultation the people had been told that in fact grass was one of the options.
Ms Porter talked a fair bit about the recommendations with regard to Green Square and multi-units and I would like to talk a bit more about this because I think it is actually very important. My understanding is that all three parties in this Assembly are broadly supportive of increased medium density in Canberra, possibly even increased high density in Canberra. If we are going to do this then one of the ways we are going do it and make it work well for people is to have a better public realm.
One way of looking at it is that if we are building homes for people which do not include a back yard and a front yard, which is what we are thinking of doing more and more in the future, we have to still give these people some space where they can go and sit on the grass, where they can look at a tree, where they can have some of the advantages that you get from back and front yards. We can argue about any particular piece, like Green Square. That is the reason for recommendation 11:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government consider the recreation needs of multi-unit dwellers when deciding what landscaping to maintain or improve.
I would hope that, in looking at the public realm work, we look very carefully at the needs of multi-unit dwellers because they, having less space in their own private
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