Page 1497 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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February 2011 which requires those applicants to submit a Pre-DA Community Consultation Summary; and
(g) the Minister for Planning has foreshadowed amendments to the Planning and Development Act 2007 to further clarify the role of the proponent in consulting with the community prior to the lodgement of certain development applications;
(2) acknowledges that a public meeting of more than 200 people took place on 28 March 2011 where the overwhelming sentiment of the meeting was that attendees were concerned about parking and traffic and supported redevelopment of the old Jamison Inn site if it was of an appropriate scale with adequate parking; and
(3) calls on the Assembly to allow, without interference, the independent statutory authority, the ACT Planning and Land Authority, to assess the development application against the requirements of the Planning and Development Act 2007 and the Territory Plan 2008.”.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (6.19): I am in an interesting position in agreeing with large parts of both the original motion and the amendment because basically both of them are largely factual discussions of what is happening in Jamison in particular and the ACT community as a whole.
The major message that I get from Mr Coe’s motion is one which the Greens have been saying for a long time and that is that the people of Canberra do not really understand what is happening to their city and they would like better consultation about how Canberra is changing. I think we all acknowledge that Canberra is changing and that some parts of it have to be changed. Change is inevitable. But people feel that they are not part of the change; that it is happening to them rather than their being part of it. That is the big message that I get from Mr Coe’s motion and it is something that the Greens have been concerned about from our original engagement in this Assembly.
One of the items of our agreement with the Labor Party was the need to reinstate neighbourhood planning. That has not yet happened and I will talk a little bit more about that when I get to my amendments. I have to agree with Mr Coe that while in a lot of cases, as Mr Barr has said, there is clarity about exactly who is meant to do what, most people out there in the community do not understand what is going on because most people in the community only deal with one planning issue. When they find that something is happening, they do not know what to do. They are suddenly faced with a very quick task of trying to learn planning 101 in a couple of days and it is not easy.
The current situation is complicated, unclear and unfriendly. Even for someone like me who spends quite a lot of time with planning issues and looking at ACTPLA’s website and going to the community meetings it is still not easy to work out what is going on. It is even harder in many cases to work out what is the best outcome, taking all things into consideration.
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