Page 2611 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 28 June 2011

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it is all well and good to say that there will be a master plan and at the end of a period of about 18 months or so they might get some changes, but there are some serious on-the-ground issues at Erindale centre at the moment, most particularly parking around the restaurant precinct. The parking situation there is a disgrace. The fact that it has been allowed to degenerate to this degree is a poor reflection on this government. It reflects its lack of concern for local communities because it has now been in power for 10 years and it has done nothing about this. In fact all it has done is make it worse with the changes in parking arrangements through the development that has taken place in that area. Things have got much worse in the last couple of years.

These are issues that need to be addressed ahead of any master planning process. The people of Wanniassa, the people of Monash, the people of Fadden and others who use Erindale should not have to wait years and years before these traffic issues are fixed. The traffic issues and the parking issues in that precinct in Erindale are urgent, they are serious, they are affecting trade and they are affecting people’s ability to access their group centre at Erindale. The government cannot use the master planning process as an excuse not to get on with that job and fix what is an urgent and significant problem.

Planning and Building Legislation Amendment Bill 2011

Detail stage

Clause 1.

Debate resumed from 5 May 2011.

MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.02): When we started debating this bill in May I prepared a number of amendments to the bill in relation to a number of consultation and notification issues. Subsequent to that I have had discussions with the government about the issues in my amendments. I understand that they will be tabling another bill in August which will address a number of my proposals, although I understand it will be through some slightly different mechanisms.

For this reason I will not move my amendments today, but I would like to take the opportunity to share my concerns and proposals with other members; otherwise I had specific amendments which made clearer my concerns and I would have spoken to those.

I think that all members are aware of the considerable community concerns about planning issues, especially in infill. Mr Seselja has just spoken about them. As I have said, it was part of our agreement with the Labor Party to have much better community consultation. Today’s Canberra Times has three planning-related issues in it—the Jamison Inn, the supermarkets out at the airport and the war memorials by the lake. Two of those, admittedly, are NCA-related issues; nonetheless planning is a major issue, and consultation for Canberra. I think that almost everybody, possibly everyone in this Assembly, would agree that we have not got consultation right yet as far as planning goes.

My amendments, which were fairly modest because I was trying to put them within the scope of a PABLA bill, were seeking to address those concerns. They covered two


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