Page 1112 - Week 04 - Thursday, 22 April 2021
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light rail is in the city; most of Canberra’s heritage buildings that are outside the parliamentary triangle, which of course is the responsibility of the commonwealth government, are in the city. So this is the area for urban renewal.
CBDs are fundamental to cities’ economies, and Canberra’s CBD has doubled its economic output in the last 15 years from around $3 billion to $6 billion. The residential population in the CBD, by deliberate plan, has doubled and will double again to manage that significant infrastructure program and to facilitate the billions of dollars of private sector investment that the government is seeking through a range of public-private partnerships, transport related, social infrastructure related: for example, convention centres, stadiums, new theatre precincts. These are single assets that there will only be one of in a city of 450,000 people. And through two decades of planning work and countless debates, it was determined that those key pieces of infrastructure would be located centrally so that they could serve all Canberrans. The City Renewal Authority, a small team, is tasked with the delivery, in partnership with key agencies, of that massive renewal agenda.
The legislation that established the City Renewal Authority allows for other precincts to be identified in the future as priority urban renewal precincts. And the government—through City Services, through Minister Gentleman’s directorate, and through the Suburban Land Agency—also undertakes renewal projects outside the CRA precinct. This point in time and this decade, 2017 to the mid-2020s, is going to see the most significant renewal of the oldest part of Canberra, and it needs a dedicated agency to manage that renewal. It is beyond business as usual.
To address Mr Cain’s specific concerns, if we took all the staff who currently work on renewal projects in the territory out of City Services, out of planning and out of the SLA, to focus just on this piece of work in the city, then he is correct—not much else would happen in Canberra. Given the scale of the program, we needed additional resources. I brought legislation to this place. It was passed in 2017 and the City Renewal Authority was established. It is undertaking incredibly important work, facilitating investment that will only come in Canberra’s CBD. We need to understand that there is a massive, massive competition for local capital and that Canberra at 440,000 people with an economy the size that we have is not going to be able to compete with other major cities in Australia, let alone within the South Pacific, the Southern Hemisphere and indeed globally unless we have a dedicated focus on chasing that investment and securing it for Canberra. Why? That means jobs, opportunity and economic growth for our city.
In what sorts of areas, I hear you ask. In the arts and culture, the new theatre precinct; in convention facilities; in new hotels. A key part of the City Renewal Authority’s responsibility is what people will have seen unfolding around our CBD, which is investment in public spaces and places—the 50,000 people who come to work in the city every day. Its residential population is approaching 30,000 and it is going to keep on growing. So it is fundamentally important to Canberra’s future economic success that we have a viable and vibrant CBD. We will always have the most polycentric distribution of employment of any Australian city, and there is more employment outside our CBD than there is inside our CBD. We are one of the few cities in Australia that has that feature.
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