Page 4992 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 26 October 2011
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and other needs and have the commuter parking occur at a different location which does not see a conflict between the use of those resources. The government is committed to pursuing that course of action and I was pleased to confirm that to representatives of the Calwell centre in the last couple of weeks.
The other issues that Ms Bresnan raised are issues around lighting, bus shelters and so on. These are all matters the government is quite happy to consider and look at as part of its day-to-day management of territory and municipal service infrastructure and whether or not improvements can be made in these areas. These types of requests come in regularly from around the city as different issues arise in relation to transport infrastructure. So the government will not be objecting to Ms Bresnan’s amendment, on the basis of the comments I have just made and on the basis of our understanding of what she is seeking to achieve from that amendment.
I think the most important thing to reiterate in this debate is that the operation of the Calwell centre is obviously very important to its local community and to the catchment that it serves. It is of course always desirable to try and make sure that the centre works as efficiently and as effectively as possible. But when it comes to the allocation of limited resources in relation to planning assessments and the development of overall planning strategy documents, relative priority has to be accorded to a whole range of centres across the city and assessments made in the context of the overall ACT planning strategy, because ultimately all of our efforts in the planning and transport realm must be focused on the overall achievement of our strategic objectives for the city as a whole, as outlined in the government draft planning strategy, focusing development along corridors and around centres, ensuring the efficient operation of centres and ensuring that that occurs in an orderly and sequential manner.
The priority that is given to Calwell will obviously come through from the consultation we are now undertaking on the draft planning strategy. I would encourage members, and I would indeed encourage everyone in that area of Tuggeranong around Calwell who has a strong interest in this, to participate in the draft planning strategy consultation, to indicate why they believe Calwell is important and to allow Calwell to be viewed in the context of the other centres that equally seek to see this type of effort made.
I commend Mr Barr’s amendments, obviously, and the government will not be objecting to Ms Bresnan’s amendment.
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (11.37): I obviously support Ms Bresnan’s amendment to Mr Barr’s proposed amendments. I will not go through Mr Smyth’s original motion because, by this stage of the debate, it has been well and truly spoken about, so I will just talk on the amendments.
Firstly, on Mr Barr’s amendments, I point out that all they actually do is delete paragraph (2) of Mr Smyth’s amendment, which holds up the sale of land for an aged-care facility. My colleague Ms Bresnan has spoken very eloquently about the need for aged-care facilities in Canberra in general and Tuggeranong in particular. While the Greens are very supportive of good planning—I will talk some more about the
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