Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2317 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

What we see with this government is a move back towards taking the public sector out of planning, taking the public sector out of development application processes, taking the public sector out of building inspection and control processes, and saying the market can deliver those services. The whole point of planning is to mitigate the effects of market failure. This government doesn't seem to understand that. Instead it wants to put those functions back into the market.

That is why we've seen the Planning and Land Management Group focus on and raise issues such as having the private sector take out contracts for development applications. That is on the agenda. In the next five years, unless there is a fundamental shift in the philosophy of planning in this city and around Australia, we will see moves to provide for the private sector, for the developers themselves, to assess development applications, because the argument will be they'll be cheaper and more efficient.

How does that recognise the public role in planning? How does it recognise the essentially democratic function of planning in controlling the shape and future form of our cities? It doesn't, but that is exactly the path down which this government is heading. We have seen it already in relation to building control and regulatory activity, where we have seen the effective outsourcing of building inspection to private certifiers. The consequence of that is a reduction in the community's faith in the effectiveness and transparency of that process.

Then this government commissioned a review of that outsourcing. Who did they ask to review it? The private sector consultant. There are, of course, reasons to engage private sector consultants, but we had a private sector consultant engaged to judge the worthiness of private sector consultancy in another area. It is a crazy situation, and it is a shift away from public interests in planning.

There are other issues in the Planning and Land Management Group that really are not addressed by this budget document. We have seen the loss of PALM's ability to deal with issues such as effective residential subdivision design, and we have seen that in the new areas of Gungahlin and, to a lesser degree, from my reading of it, Tuggeranong. Residential subdivision design is creating low-quality, new suburban environments for people to live in: small blocks, loss of private open space, and crowded streets. All of these problems are causing a continued downgrading in the Planning and Land Management Group.

Mr Humphries: Tsk, tsk, tsk.

MR CORBELL: I hear the minister tut-tutting over there and I know he is going to stand up and say, "Well Gungahlin was started under the Labor administration." Yes, you are right. Mistakes were made. Serious mistakes were made under the last Labor administration in relation to the initial suburbs in Gungahlin, but we have not seen this government rectify that problem. If you go to the newer parts of Ngunnawal, the newer parts of Nicholls or the newer parts of Amaroo, you will find crowded, closely built suburbs that lack private, open space in people's backyards and lack public open space.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .