Page 4747 - Week 11 - Thursday, 20 October 2011

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This again highlights how the government is using its master planning program to fit in with its broad strategic planning and transport strategies. I would encourage the community to get involved and give their feedback on how we are going to achieve these outcomes.

MS LE COUTEUR: Supplementary, Mr Speaker.

MR SPEAKER: Supplementary, Ms Le Couteur.

MS LE COUTEUR: Minister, in your first answer you said there would always be some need for greenfields. Given that Canberra is coming up against the borders of the ACT in a number of directions, where do you propose that we will be going—taking a long-term view here?

MR CORBELL: I would draw Ms Le Couteur’s attention to the aspects of the planning strategy that recognise that there are potential residential development opportunities in locations such as west Belconnen. Members will be familiar with the proposals that have been put forward by a private consortium, the Riverview Group, as to the potential expansion of west Belconnen towards the Murrumbidgee river corridor. This is an area that has been identified by the government in the draft strategy as an area worthy of more detailed consideration and that is the work that will occur as a result of its inclusion in this draft planning strategy.

Equally, the draft planning strategy reconfirms that there are opportunities potentially in the Kowen plateau as was confirmed initially in the Canberra spatial plan in 2004. However, it is important to make the point with Kowen that there are significant logistical difficulties if we are to seek to service development of the Kowen plateau from the ACT side of the border, but there is the potential to effectively, efficiently and economically service urban development in Kowen from the New South Wales side of the border. That is why it is recognised in the planning strategy that any development of Kowen should be considered in the context of a cross-border development potentially with the Queanbeyan City Council in the Queanbeyan City Council area.

That highlights that increasingly development around us must be viewed in a regional context. It is not development either on the ACT side of the border or the New South Wales side of the border; it is a regional context that we must bring to our consideration of these issues and I think that the draft planning strategy is setting a very clear way ahead about how we continue to strengthen and continue to highlight that we are a city in a region and that our connections and our relationships with the region are vital.

Children and young people—care and protection

MR DOSZPOT: My question is to the minister representing the Minister for Community Services. Minister, the ACT Public Advocate in her interim report of her review of the emergency response strategy for children in crisis in the ACT noted that policies and procedures “have had a serious and detrimental impact on children for


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