Page 4259 - Week 11 - Thursday, 25 October 2018
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MADAM SPEAKER: Thank you, members of admin and procedure, for getting through the review of standing orders.
Planning and Urban Renewal—Standing Committee
Report 6
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (11.24): I present the following report:
Planning and Urban Renewal—Standing Committee—Report 6—Draft Variation to the Territory Plan No 345 Mawson Group Centre: Zone Changes and Amendments to the Mawson Precinct Map and Code, dated 17 October 2018, together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.
I move:
That the report be noted.
Today the planning and urban renewal committee is tabling its sixth report to the Ninth Assembly. This is into Mawson. It was referred to us on 15 May, pursuant to section 73 of the Planning and Development Act, which means that all Territory Plan variations are automatically referred to the planning and urban renewal committee. We decided this was worthy of investigation. We held one public hearing. We heard from seven witnesses, including members of the community, business owners, the minister and officials. We had a total of 29 submissions, which covered a large range of issues.
We have 12 recommendations. I will not read them all out but will group them for ease of comprehension. Recommendation 1 is that, subject to our recommendations, the draft variation be approved. Our next two recommendations are standing recommendations that basically say the ACT government needs to finalise the development of a draft Territory Plan variation as soon as possible following the completion of the relevant master plan.
There has been a gap of years in the case of Mawson, and this makes for very poor consultation. The community express their views and then the whole thing seems to disappear and reappear in a few years. This is very poor, and the government could and should do better. We also thought the government could finalise the development of master plans in a more timely fashion.
The next issue we considered was solar access, and we had three recommendations about that: recommendations 4, 5 and 6. I think you could say this is a recurring theme.
I should have said at the beginning that these comments on the recommendations are the comments of Caroline Le Couteur MLA rather than Caroline Le Couteur, chair of this planning committee. I forgot to make that editorial comment.
As in other places, the community is very concerned to maintain solar access. The committee as a whole felt that, while the government went some way in that direction in the draft Territory Plan variation, we should listen to the community and go further.
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