We're hoping that the ACT planning minister is brave enough to send a signal to developers that it's not okay to grab community use sites, such as a bowling club, a swimming pool or a tennis club and seek to change the lease purpose and zoning of the site for their personal gain.

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We're also hoping that the minister looks after community interests before individual commercial interests.

He could accept the recommendations of the planning committee report into the Braddon Bowling Club site. He could listen to the issues raised by the community during the consultation process and effectively ignored in planning and development approval process.

He could show some concern and empathy for the local seniors who lost their sporting and social venue.

It's bad planning to lose these community facilities as population and density increases.

We're hoping that the minister saves the site for community use. That any development enhances the surrounding community uses.

We're hoping he declares the site and the surrounding precinct as a community hub which is one of the government's strategic planning priorities.

This precinct is important to community wellbeing. He can protect this site by simply not agreeing to rezoning and changing its lease purpose away from community use.

The minister should advise the developers that if they want to build a six-storey development that requires mixed commercial and residential zoning buy a site with that zoning.

Don't grab a cheap community use site and then lobby for it to be rezoned. We're hoping the minister takes back control of urban planning.

There has been a huge sigh of relief in the ACT, as our treasurer has belatedly discovered the "value for money" concept.

The ice rink mirage was abandoned because it was in the wrong place, with the wrong geology and poor value for money.

How does a pool in Commonwealth Park with little to commend it in terms of position, geology, and facilities start to sound?

Especially when the aim is to destroy the loved Civic Pool in order to provide a convention centre which can surely wait?

Fingers crossed the federal government could also learn about value for money, and stop supporting the ACT infrastructure spending madness.

Flawed park housing plan

How will the future residents like living in the proposed community housing at Margaret Timpson Park in Belconnen town centre?

They will be overlooked by high-rise Sentinel, disturbed by the traffic on Benjamin Way and gawked at by users of the park.

These are people who have had a rough experience of life and need supported housing which is quiet and private.

They should not just be parked somewhere which is easy and cheap for the government to build on.

Christine Coghlan, Higgins

Holding Labor accountable

What a pleasant surprise to read Jack Waterford's article ("Albanese will find it hard to erase the 'L-word'," September 12).

It is about time the media stopped giving Mr Albanese and Labor a free ride and start holding their feet to the fire for a change.

Some of us, since May 2022, have been watching, painfully, as Mr Albanese progressively and quickly turns Australia into a nanny state, of unsustainable electricity costs, of unsustainable taxes and debt to pay for uncontrolled welfare spending.

Unions are out of control under new........

© Canberra Times