Opposition Leader Zed Seselja is making merry with Mr Stanhope’s ongoing blame shifting of planning failures to a bureacracy Mr Stanhope has been the master of for the best part of a decade.
“Jon Stanhope has no one to blame but himself and his Ministers for what he described as ‘excessive red tape’ in the planning system,” Zed said.
“Mr Stanhope claims there is an overlapping of responsibilities with different planning departments, yet his solution was to create another Department, Land and Property Services, under his control less than two years ago.
“We now have two Ministers picking and choosing which planning issues they will get involved in, which is causing confusion and slowing down the delivery of infrastructure, placing more pressure on housing affordability.
“The Canberra Liberals have been talking about a better way for planning for some time. We have long argued this Labor regime was pushing up the price of housing in the ACT and placing unnecessary delay in delivering housing options to Canberrans.
“We currently have before the Assembly, the Infrastructure Canberra Bill. The Bill is designed to streamline planning delivery with a co-ordinated and detailed infrastructure plan backed up with an Infrastructure Commissioner and board of experts to provide advice on the delivery of these projects.
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