Page 2226 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
very concerned about full notification, reviews and appeal rights as it is a key issue for them, a very time-consuming one.
They spend their time watching developments across their communities to ensure consistency with the shared community vision of the future for their broader neighbourhood and to ensure that they and the people that they represent, their constituents, have a say in it. This is not unreasonable. This is entirely within their purpose as community councils.
The Woden Valley Community Council hosted the combined community council public meetings where all the community councils were represented. There were representatives of the community councils of Belconnen, Gungahlin, north Canberra, Tuggeranong, Weston Creek and Woden Valley. They adopted the following motion:
We strongly support the provisions of the Bill that inserts in the Planning and Development Act 2007 a requirement whereby the validity of a development application will be affected if the notification requirements are not met or the full information for a merit or impact track development application has not been provided;
We strongly support the visions in the Bill to broaden the range of the issues to include the overall intent of the Territory Plan that can be considered by ACTPLA when reconsidering its decision on a development application and by ACAT in reviewing a decision by ACTPLA; and
We strongly support the provisions in the Bill to broaden appeal rights.
I also would note that one issue raised at the joint community councils was the suggestion that community groups, where they have the relevant objects in their constitution, be allowed, in fact, to appeal DAs for community facilities in town centres.
It is, I have to say, very disappointing that the government was unable to support my bill today given that Mr Barr himself stated last December:
My approach to the ACT’s planning legislation is that it should be open to periodic review and continuous improvement to ensure it continues to meet the needs of industry and community.
This is what this bill is trying to do. It is trying to review the Planning and Development Act to meet the needs of the community. Given that neither the Liberal Party nor the Labor Party are going to support this bill, I suppose I am pleased Mr Barr said that he plans in the future to introduce legislation to address the notification issue. I actually find it very hard that anybody could feel it was acceptable for notifications to not necessarily have any particular relationship to the actual content of the DA. I find it impossible to believe that either party, Liberal or Labor, could ever regard that as a reasonable situation. Whatever you may feel about the other parts of the bill, that, I would have thought, was totally uncontroversial and fair—very fair.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video