Stanhope backs Barr, but not his style of debating

Chief Minister Jon Stanhope says Andrew Barr is an excellent Planning Minister, but questions his style of community engagement.

The Planning Minister has angered eminent Canberrans over the urban infill debate, calling the territory's first architect Walter Burley Griffin irrelevant and accusing older residents of wanting to preserve museums to their childhoods.

Mr Stanhope said some of the language in the debate was poorly chosen with ''intensification'' and ''infill'' unnecessarily raising alarm.

He recently intervened to calm a row between Mr Barr and Dickson resident Marie Coleman, with an offer of a whole-of-government response to residents' concerns over Mr Barr's approach to redevelopment.

No sooner had the debate cooled when, on November 6, Mr Barr told the Planning Institute of Australia ACT division that he had killed off Griffin and had met fierce resistance over the infill debate from Dickson residents.

His remarks reignited the row.

He rejected claims he was playing wedge politics, pitting younger constituents against older ones, and this week accused his opponents of wanting to preserve Canberra as a museum to their own childhoods.

At the ACT Chamber of Commerce's quarterly business expectations survey launch yesterday, Mr Stanhope said Mr Barr was an excellent minister, engaged in a broader conversation about future vision. He said Mr Barr was talking of the need to change and he, too, was engaged in that conversation.

''I have some concern about some of the language which was used for intensification, infill it does raise the spectre of paving over open space or green space and that is not the Government's intention at all,'' Mr Stanhope said.

''But we do need a conversation to promote broad community understanding around the need for the city to change, to the way we deliver housing in particular, and I am engaged in that conversation,''

Mr Stanhope said Canberra had as many planning enthusiasts as there were residents, but only one minister, and the debate was healthy.

''We all communicate in our own way, the Minister for Planning is communicating a range of issues in his own way,'' Mr Stanhope said.

Asked if this was the way to go about it, Mr Stanhope said, ''Well, I don't necessarily agree with that thesis.

''We all have a style. I seek to communicate issues in a different way, but we all do. We present in our own way."

For more comments from Mr Stanhope on the planning debate in Canberra, see the print edition of today's Canberra Times.

Source: The Canberra Times