Page 1924 - Week 07 - Thursday, 31 May 1990
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the Government could also take a harder line in relation to that section which says "encouraging developers to ensure that residential streets, and the layout of blocks, will where possible allow for home owners to make maximum use of passive solar construction techniques".
The word I do not like there is the first one, "encouraging". I think that the word should be "requiring". I do not think it is too difficult to do that and I believe the community will accept it. There should be a planning requirement that houses are oriented to the sun. I do not think that is very hard. What we need are long, narrow blocks. The angle of that block depends on its orientation to the sun. It is no great trouble. In some streets, you will have houses long to the street; in others they will be narrow to the street or in various other alignments. There is no great trouble in drawing up the plans. That should not be "encouraged" in our planning approvals; it should be "required".
Under present arrangements, the land is sold off to developers. Whether it goes to developers or is restored to government agencies, it is no great trouble to carry out the planning in that mode. Then we could take the further step of saying that, not only is insulation required for the house, but the house design must be such that it accommodates the energy available from the sun. There are simple requirements that can be built into the building code to do that. That should not be a matter of encouragement; it should be a matter of requirement.
I want to discuss some of the matters associated with transport. The document mentions the promotion of public transport, and that is great. Let us acknowledge first of all that in Canberra our great problem is that, in the rapid growth after the last war, there was no concept of the greenhouse effect and this city was designed to be a city for cars. We are now faced with that. It is going to be very difficult to change it; for example, to change the traffic arrangements to Tuggeranong. It is too late to question whether we should have put in that eastern parkway. We are stuck with this arrangement and it is a problem.
In the future, we are going to build Gungahlin. I believe that everyone here hopes that Gungahlin is many, many years down the track. We want it as late on the scene as possible. Indeed, we do not have to follow the mode of looking for development. The way this city can be sustained is not through population growth. However, inevitably, many years down the track, Gungahlin will be developed.
If we are to take the Government's document seriously, we must completely change our ideas of how Gungahlin is to be planned. I know that already the suburb is substantially under way on the planners' drawing boards and it is no different in concept from Belconnen or Tuggeranong. It is
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