Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contribution, but let me say that Senator Lundy has got it wrong about the Senate. The role here is to uphold democracy, to be a house of review, to be a backstop when government makes mistakes, to be a shoulder holder for the government and to make sure that wrong decisions are taken up by the keeper. To confuse that, as Senator Lundy has just done, with the Senate having a role of planner for the national capital is to have a basic misunderstanding of what this place is about and of its constitutional authority and responsibility. In its own press release the committee said:

Federal Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories has recommended that the Griffin Legacy Amendments be disallowed so that the National Capital Authority has the opportunity to refine the amendments.

That press release came out under the name of the Chairman, Senator Ross Lightfoot, and of the Deputy Chair, Senator Kate Lundy. Senator Lundy dismisses that as saying that that was a call to the government to disallow these amendments so that they could take them back and consider them. But when the government failed to do that, the Labor Party capitulated, threw up their hands and said, ‘Well, what can we do?’ The Greens have come in and said, ‘We won’t capitulate to the government on this.’ As Senator Lundy said, many planners and architects ‘disagree’ with the NCA’s decision. She went on to say that at the roundtable there was a sense of the magnitude of the concerns and that the committee ‘were shocked at the vehemence and passion’ shown by people about these amendments.

Do we simply say that the government turned a deaf ear to that and truncated the committee’s deliberations, so we will capitulate as well? Of course we do not. The role of the Senate is to ensure proper process and that citizens are heard, not least when it comes to the planning for the next 20 to 30 years of this great capital. So I disagree with Senator Lundy; I think it is the role of the Senate and, indeed, of the opposition to stand up to a government when it is failing proper process and failing the citizens. We are a house of review. It is our job to uphold the review potential and power of the Senate, even when the government has the numbers. Had Senator Lundy supported the Greens on this matter, it is very likely that Senator Humphries opposite—he is not opposite now, but he would have had to come in here for a vote—would have been tested on this matter as to whether he stood up for due process for the national capital or he did not. Now he escapes that test because Labor has not put him to it.

Senator Lundy said that we do not need the Senate to be a third planning authority. We do not expect that role. But we do expect it to have the gumption to stand up for proper process when there has been such heartfelt and very informed opinion against the amendments which we are dealing with today. There is no reason why the National Capital Authority, for example, should not have been required to implement detailed rules and enshrine them into the National Capital Plan so that planners and people who love this city but have a different point of view could see that there are at least guidelines for the future, not a void into which all sorts of prescriptive and vested interests can move in the future against the wider interests of the citizens.

Canberra is the nation’s capital. I agree with the government that we are all proud of it and of the way it has developed, what it is and what it represents for this country. But I agree with Senator Lundy that the asseveration by the government senator that Canberra has got a dead heart is insulting, appalling and a blighted view of the magnificence of this green capital. What does the government want Canberra to be—Las Vegas? Is there some form of transformation of Canberra into a different sort of city that the government has in mind here? That is at the very heart of this matter because of course there will be big development proposals coming down the line to jump in on these amended rules; of course there will be pressure coming from the big end of town. What the minister’s representative disclosed here today is that this government is amenable to that pressure. So we should be alarmed and worried. He calls it the dead heart. No, it is not. It is a vibrant, beautiful, living heart of a city that is different. If only other cities had the green space, the relaxation, the delight to the eye that Canberra presents to the citizen and the visitor alike. That comment from the minister’s representative was insulting, unbecoming and ignorant of what this capital is about.