Page 1541 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 12 August 1992
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This notion that urban renewal, urban consolidation, urban infill is going to solve all our housing problems by increasing the density of our population is rubbish. The studies over a long period of time have indicated that, no matter how much urban infill, how much urban renewal, how much urban consolidation you do, you still cannot satisfy the normal demand for housing. I think the Minister will tell us, when he gets up to speak, that the annual demand for new houses is something of the order of 3,000 a year. I do not think the figures have changed since I was the Chief Minister and the Minister responsible.
Mr Wood: About 3,500.
MR KAINE: Okay. You cannot generate 3,000 to 3,500 blocks for new houses by urban infill. You can never do it. So the greenfields development has to go on as well. The infill can be only a supplement. There has to be some sort of revision of the plan over a period of years. Urban renewal is not going to solve our problem. It is not going to change the need for the road system. It is not going to change the dependence of people on the automobile in the foreseeable future. It is not going to suddenly turn the ACTION buses into a profit making enterprise with everybody in Canberra getting on the buses. I know that the Minister would like that. His objectives are commendable and we support him on that. Bus transport has to become more efficient as a system; but it is not going to happen overnight and it is not going to happen simply because we come back in 1992 or 1993 and say, "Gee whiz, we are going to have to do some urban renewal". That does not change one thing.
The fact is that Canberra has been built as a city with lots of open space. Our experience over the last year, even if we do not go back beyond that, demonstrates that the people of Canberra want it to remain that way. There is only a limited amount of filling in of open space that the population will tolerate. I submit that if you go to the people and put the proposition to them in a rational and logical way they will generally agree with it, but you cannot assume automatically that they will. So there is a certain amount of infill that can be put into effect, and I suppose we need to undertake a certain amount of urban renewal.
But I am rather fascinated with Mr Lamont saying that in some of our areas the houses are getting very old. In traditional terms there is not a single old house in Canberra. None of them have been here for more than about 50 years. There are some places in Australia where they value those old houses and they turn them into all sorts of interesting things. There has been a claim in recent years in Canberra that there are not enough old buildings that can be used for all sorts of things to give this city a different character from that it has now - that is, a public image of being fresh, shiny, new and glossy. Until we get some old buildings that change that image we are not going to be able to achieve any different perception of what Canberra is. Yet Mr Lamont seems to be saying to me that because Ainslie is getting a bit old and Braddon is getting a bit old we should go through with a bulldozer and knock everything down and build new buildings there. I do not buy that - not for a minute. If that is what he means by urban renewal, then it is not on. There has to be a plan; there has to be a reason; there has to be justification.
If Mr Lamont really wants to talk about urban renewal, let us look at the subject that he wants to keep on the backburner - the Kingston foreshores. That is an area of prime land that we could get on with and turn into some productive use, but for some reason which Mr Lamont has not explained he wants to keep that on
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