Page 1732 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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As Mr Coe has indicated, two blocks of land in Dunlop are zoned under the territory plan as being commercial zone 4, local centre. These blocks are 2 and 4, section 133 Dunlop. The Dunlop local centre site, block 4, was sold to a developer in October 2007 and a lease was granted in November 2007. Development approval was granted on 18 March 2009 for a mixed-use development on the corner of Lance Hill Avenue and Shoobridge Circuit.
This development proposal consisted of a single-storey building to accommodate 400 square metres of commercial use and a single-storey building to accommodate four single, attached residential units. The current development approval is to commence within two years after the day the approval took effect and to be finished two years after the day development begins.
As I indicated earlier, a new development application has been received by the ACT Planning and Land Authority that now proposes an 800-square-metre, single-storey commercial facility and no residential units. That development application was publicly notified from 7 April to 29 April this year, and I am sure Mr Coe has studied it in detail.
The Planning and Land Authority will continue to independently assess this application under the Planning and Development Act. The ACT government cannot and will not interfere in that development assessment process as we are determined to keep politics put of planning.
For that reason, the government will not support Mr Coe’s motion this morning. We do intend to support the Greens’ amendment as proposed by Ms Le Couteur but perhaps with one tiny factual change. In proposed paragraph (1)(b) there is a statement that the application has yet to be notified. My advice from the Planning and Land Authority is that it was notified from 7 April to 29 April. So if Ms Le Couteur is amenable to making that change to her amendment, the government will happily support the Greens’ amendment this morning.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.26): I would like to thank Mr Coe for raising this issue today. I think we are all in furious agreement about the importance of communities having local shops and local facilities. They are the hubs of local communities, just as schools are. The Greens, of course, want to support suburbs being developed in a way that encourages people to walk and ride to their local shops and their local community facilities. So from that point of view, the Greens support the aspirations behind Mr Coe’s motion today. But, unfortunately, we cannot agree with the detail of it and I will go through the reasons for that now.
In his motion he starts off by saying:
(a) the ACT Government has neglected the residents of Dunlop.
I guess that public transport in Dunlop is very poor and, as we have just heard, there are no local facilities; so there is some reason to agree with that statement of Mr Coe’s.
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