Premier weighs in over Bunnings proposal The Keperra quarry site. Queensland's Premier Campbell Newman has stepped into a planning issue in his Ashgrove electorate as Brisbane City councillors debate an application by Bunnings to build a hardware store in The Gap on the old Keperra quarry site. Last week Mr Newman wrote to Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk to "express his concerns" after residents met him and wrote to him over the bid. There have been 112 objections to the proposal. Bunnings says 420 jobs would be created during construction and 160 afterwards. One town planning firm says the application appears to be "piggybacking" on a previous approval for a smaller hardware shop. Residents complain that a big hardware store is not recommended in the Enoggera and districts local area plan. That plan says: "If quarrying activities cease, an integrated residential precinct principally for low-density residential purposes is preferred. Small-scale non-residential development providing local services, e.g. shop or childcare centre, may be appropriate. Janelle Rains, who lives above the quarry site, said she was pleased Mr Newman had stepped in. Residents had lost faith in the council's "Have Your Say" planning forum, given that the Bunnings proposal did not fit the planning guidelines. "If the planning process is genuine and robust, there should not be exceptions to it - and this application clearly is an exception," Ms Rains said. What would be the next exception? On Friday, Cr Amanda Cooper, the chairwoman of the council's neighbourhood planning and development assessment committee, told ABC radio: "This is an area which is surrounded by a shopping centre. It is certainly not hard up against an existing residential area. So these sorts of places, Bunnings or whatever they are, they need to be located in places in our city that don't impact heavily on residential areas. We think that adjacent to a shopping centre is the right kind of place for these sorts of things to be proposed. But a shopping centre does not surround the application area and there are established homes across the road from the site.