Controversy
The Taskforce has not been without controversy. The then Premier of NSW, Bob Carr, launched it in 1999, prompting questions in Parliament. In 2007 the NSW Greens Party gave the Taskforce the dubious honour of a "Bad Developer" award for "most insidious industry lobbying effort" for its campaign to have the planning laws rewritten to remove local councils from decision-making about developments. However the Taskforce said that it did not think councils should be stripped of powers altogether. On the other hand a Greens Member of Parliament cited with approval the Urban Taskforce’s support for a complete ban on donations to political parties.
Read more about this topic: Urban Taskforce Australia
Famous quotes containing the word controversy:
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)