Big picture vision

COMMUNITY consultation could prove the key to solving the war of words on contentious community development projects.

Speaking at the launch of the ‘dialogue with the city’ initiative, a $1.5 million program designed to encourage local government community programs, Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan said the State Government’s approach to community consultation represented a paradigm shift in the dialogue process.

Shrugging off the suggestion the initiative was a ‘talk fest’, Ms MacTiernan said an improved dialogue process would assist communities put local developments in the context of broader issues.

Further, Ms MacTiernan said there would be fewer highly contentious projects as the community would have more input into, and a sense of ownership of, major projects.

“I think we’ve got some way to go. I’m not pretending that what we’ve got here is a magic wand, but I do think that it is the beginning of a paradigm shift,” she said.

“One of the problems we’ve got is that the only time members of the community are given an opportunity to comment generally is on particular projects, so they focus on very little pieces of the jigsaw.

“Our way has been to give the community an opportunity to look at the big picture so they can actually say ‘what do we need to achieve?’

“Then, when you start to look at what’s in your area, you can see that in the context of the bigger picture.”