The ACT Government was over-reacting in asking the Deputy Prime Minister, Brian Howe, to overturn the federal parliamentary committee’s finding on City Hill, Independent MLA Helen Szuty said yesterday.
“”The Deputy Prime Minister is hardly likely to overturn the decision of a broad-based parliamentary committee in which both Senator Margaret Reid and John Langmore have been involved,” she said.
Federal sources point out that the ACT Government might be barking up the wrong tree in turning to Mr Howe to overturn the committee’s recommendation. As the law stands Mr Howe, as Minister, is only empowered to disallow an NCPA draft variation of the national plan. He has no power to create a variation, such as one to permit six-storey buildings.
At present there is no formal draft variation for him to disallow. The thing got shunted to the committee before it got to that stage.
Ms Szuty said the ACT Government would do better to seek extra money to resolve the design and siting of a desperately needed new courts building.
She was not in favour of a ring of six-storey buildings surrounding Vernon Circle.
Mr Connolly said the three-storey option would raise the cost of the magistrates court building from $17.5 million to between $30 million and $40 million. It would require a building either side of the Supreme Court to get the space.
The committee said it recognised the need for a new magistrates court building, but said it could be built within the three-storey limit. However, the Chief Magistrate, Ron Cahill, disputed that.
He said there was not enough land to provide enough space for the court’s present needs even if a three-storey building were put up either side of the Supreme Court, because the southern-side site was not large enough. One six-storey building on the northern side of the Supreme Court building would have enabled shared library and custody arrangements. It could only be done if the new building went next to the existing one. It was the only way to get the space needed an the economies of co-location with the Supreme Court, which would benefit the public, the profession and court staff.
It was the best value-for-money design he had seen for a court building. ACT authorities and his staff had been working on it for 12 months.
“”I sat in three places today,” he said. “”We sit in seven or eight courts in four or five locations every day. The longer this goes on the more it costs the 100,000 people who use these courts each year.”
The chair of the committee, Bob Chynoweth, said ACT authorities might not like the recommendations, but he was sure the people of the ACT would. They did not want the city to become another Sydney or Melbourne. The issue was wider than just the magistrates-court building.
The National Capital Planning Authority, whose plan was knocked back by the committee is expected to respond today (Friday june 25). It is understood the NCPA’s plan was triggered by the ACT Government’s push on the magistrates court.
The NCPA’s position at the time was that planning could not be done one building at a time. If there were to be a six-storey building on Vernon Circle, a plan for the whole hill was needed.
But just as the NCPA argued that the plan for one building must be made in the context of the whole hill, the committee argued that the plan for one hill must be made in the context of the whole city.
The NCPA is likely to relish the task.