[Greens-Media] Lift the barr on planning

[Manderson, Roland]

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ACT GREENS MLA DEB FOSKEY MEDIA RELEASE
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10 April 08


Lift the barr on planning

ACT Greens MLA Deb Foskey will move today, in the Legislative Assembly,
to disallow the Planning Regulations of the ACT's new Planning and
Development Act. 

"The whole ACT planning system has been reconstructed over the past few
years, and the Regulations being debated today are the final piece to
fall into place" Dr Foskey said today.

"The result is less commitment to working with Canberra people
themselves in planning the city that they would like to live in, and
less guarantee of well designed energy efficient buildings,
environmentally friendly building materials and street plans." 

"In a world that needs to see continual improvement in design, it is
most disappointing that these regulations don't contain the fine tuning
necessary to send the appropriate market signals to the development
industry." 

"Nor do they make it easy for government to build in extra consultation
as community interest and capacity builds."

"In other words, there is no easy way under this new regime to lift the
bar on planning for transport, suburbs and buildings." 

"Minister Barr's new planning system encourages lowest common
denominator practices which would have no trouble getting under a limbo
bar when it should be raising the bar to encourage developers, builders
and architects to aim high." 

"This debate in the Assembly will provide a signpost to improvements to
the planning regime the Greens will pursue when hopefully we recover our
balance of power responsibilities at the next election" Dr Foskey said. 

================================
Roland Manderson   Media Advisor
ACT   Greens    MLA  Deb  Foskey  
Legislative Assembly for the ACT 
ph(02)62050551      m 0412241379
==== www.act.greens.org.au ===== 
  
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