Page 1504 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 6 April 2011
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commend Ms Le Couteur’s amendments. The government will accept them into my amendment and I hope the will of the Assembly will prevail in relation to my amendment.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (6.46), by leave: Very briefly, I just realised that, while I spoke a lot about consultation and the need for it in general, I forgot to specifically speak about the second part of my amendment, which draws everyone’s attention to the fact that, on 25 August last year, we actually passed a motion about improved planning. We called upon the ACT government to develop a process for meaningful consultation with the Canberra community on planning within an enhanced master planning process and report back to the Assembly by the end of June 2011.
We did decide to do something, so we should assume that the government will actually do what the Assembly asked it to do. I think there is an excellent chance, given what Mr Barr has said, that the government is working on this. We should let the processes which we have already set in place play out for a little bit longer before doing ad hoc planning. We set in place a process last year; let us see what comes of that before we start doing ad hoc, group centre by group centre, issue by issue planning on the floor of the Assembly. It is not the way to plan Canberra.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (6.47): The opposition will not be supporting either amendment, because what is being proposed here is to take the meat off the bone, when it comes down to it. What is being proposed is to pretty much abandon the call which the opposition is making on behalf of many hundreds, if not many thousands, of people in Ginninderra who want answers. They are not getting answers.
Do the Greens or the government actually think that, by passing the amendments which are on the table now, it will actually provide the information and assist the people of Ginninderra, in my electorate, in Mrs Dunne’s electorate, to be able to comprehend where they sit in this whole process? What is being proposed here is really quite a gutless motion.
Going through what the amendments contain, there is nothing overly offensive in them, but what they have done, as Mrs Dunne described, is to take away the call to action. It is extremely disappointing that you can get 225 people, taking an hour and a half out of their evening, to come in a very civil manner and put their views forward, call for action, and then you have members representing Ginninderra in this place, and others, just ignoring them, in effect. That is in effect what is happening.
We have an opportunity here to send a very clear message to the government to get answers. Mr Barr has said that all of these answers are going to come. I am not convinced of that at all. I am not convinced that that will occur. If it is so easy to provide all of this information, why are they not actually allowing it to go through and providing that information? They have not provided all of the information.
It is interesting that Mr Barr should say that the 2002 Jamison master plan has been incorporated; therefore that is that. In the briefing that I received on this issue, the government officials could not be that clear, and they are the experts on this. They
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