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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Tuesday, 17 August 2004) . . Page.. 3740 ..

Canberra is a planned city of world standing, but it was corrupted in the 1960s by short-sighted transport planning which put longer-term social and environment considerations a distant second behind the desire for an economically buoyant, fossil-fuel dependent, neat and tidy future based around nuclear families in homogenous satellite suburbs and reliant on the family car. Canberra is a wonderful city but we need to be more thoughtful about planning for it. We have the opportunity to create a model city for all Australians to look to for environmental best practice and for social and cultural equity and amenity. It is disappointing that the ACT government does not seem to share these aims.

I note with significant concern that the role of social planning in the ACT Planning and Land Authority appears to have been downgraded over recent years. Most recently ACTPLA advertised to replace a senior social planner with a more generalist planning position. The ACT convenor of the social planning chapter of the Planning Institute of Australia, the peak national body representing urban and regional planners, has raised significant concerns with me regarding this issue. These relate to the gradual diminution of the role of social planning within ACTPLA over recent years and to the consequently reduced possibility for planning policy and legislation in the ACT to be informed by specialist social planners.

There are concerns that while there are opportunities for social impact assessments to be prepared as part of the consideration of development applications, there are no opportunities, due to the underresourcing and understaffing of the social planning function and ACTPLA, for the criteria used for social impact assessment to be reviewed. This has meant, for example, that social planners cannot currently assess the impacts of people moving into high density housing, their levels of social participation and ability to access services. Apparently, currently there is also no permanent cultural planner on staff at ACTPLA. I am very concerned that if this is the case cultural heritage issues may be receiving much less attention than they should be.

I put it to the Assembly that if we are going to take social planning for the territory seriously, we must have distinct and sufficiently resourced social and cultural planning functions within ACTPLA. The ACT government needs to have a strong vision for social and cultural planning in the ACT and ACTPLA needs to be resourced to deliver it. Strategic social planning issues should be considered automatically as part of all planning decisions being made for the ACT, not just as part of those that focus on the traditional social policy beacons such as access and mobility or aged care issues—important as these are.

In addition, we should ensure that there is capacity for specialist social planners to regularly review and improve the criteria used to assess the social and cultural impacts of planning and development decisions. These issues are too important to be reduced to just a tick in a box. I would like to see social planners making a significant contribution to urban design and to have the capacity to bring together the aims of the territory’s crime prevention strategies, for example, with planning and design concepts that are meaningful for Canberra’s youth. Currently, young people have very limited opportunities to have their interests and issues considered in urban planning and design. The territory’s young people are missing opportunities to contribute to the cultural and economic life of the city and the broader ACT.

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