News - Planning & development

In this previous article, we raised serious concerns about the direction being taken by the ACT Government with their published Territory Plan variation (1.82 MB) for the Gold Creek Homestead.

Recapping briefly, the agreement previously reached between the community, ACTPLA and Minister Corbell was (as taken from an ACTPLA email summarising the agreement back in 2006):


Our previous correspondence to/from Minister Andrew Barr is in the link above and a summary of the community hopes for the site is here. A presentation on the historical significance of the Gold Creek Homestead site is here.

Kevin Cox, Ian Ruecroft and I met with Minister Barr on 4 July and explained our concerns to him - mainly that the draft variation does not encapsulate this agreement, and in fact it runs quite counter to it.

We also pointed out the following concerns about the draft variation:

• The statement of greatest conflict with the preceding negotiations is: "Any separate aged care dwellings will be part of a managed complex and will not be individually leased."
• 1.1 specifically refers to "limited community use"
• 2.1 refers to the Gold Creek Homestead Site Committee preparing a report "Future use of the Gold Creek Homestead". Also refers to an ACTPLA Planning Study. Neither this report or this study were provided as attachments to the draft variation - a serious omission, as without them it is difficult to substantiate the claims made in the variation.

This is particularly the case given that the variation states in 2.1 "It is intended that the indicative concept plan [from the study] will form the basis of lease and development conditions, which will inform the release of the site for development..."

How anyone without those additional documents could be expected to make an informed assessment of the proposal? It's an open cheque book, and nothing is binding.

The key points we made for a way forward were:

• that the homestead should be maintained on a separate title from the aged care facility
• that part of the arrangement should be a solid funding commitment to restore the homestead to a standard that would allow community use with little ongoing maintenance
• that the homestead should be managed by a committee that includes delegates from the community, the aged care facility residents, and the ACT Government.

In all we had a good hearing with the Minister, but no commitments were given as our proposals cross over other portfolios, so we await his response...

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