Page 1978 - Week 07 - Thursday, 23 August 2007
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have to live and work in it and for its own sake as well as to maintain the biodiversity of its ecosystems?
Clause 48 talks about the plan “giving effect to its object in a way that gives effect to sustainability principles”. This is one of those clauses that I have to stand on my head to understand. You are asking for something to give effect to something that gives effect. How about rephrasing it to “achieving its aims while also enhancing sustainability”? I suggest the plain English guide needs to be written into this legislation. There should also be a dedicated explanatory website and a booklet or two—or all three. I presume these sustainability principles are the principles identified in the objects sections of the act which describe sustainable development. But it is not clear; there may be more or fewer sustainability principles than the four that are identified in section 8. It may be that decision makers are entitled to take the expanded definitions of sustainable development that are contained in other legislation.
If that is the case then it should be made explicit in this legislation. If we are going to put sustainable development into the act, and if that definition is going to be built on only four stated key principles, can’t we simply say that those same principles will inform or underpin the territory plan? Unfortunately, the government chose to ignore the advice of various environmental peak bodies that “ecologically sustainable development” would be a better form of words than “sustainable development”. To the extent that this is principally a problem with definitions, a future amendment which expands and clarifies the meaning of sustainable development could solve the problem.
As I reminded the Assembly on Tuesday when discussing the objects clauses in chapter 2 of the bill, ACTCOSS pointed out that the sustainability principles themselves were much better articulated in the 1992 national strategy for ecologically sustainable development—itself, by the way, a result of a year or two’s process that the Hawke government encouraged. Somehow, in the intervening period, the idea that sustainable development incorporates the promotion of individual and community wellbeing and welfare has slipped off the agenda. Does anyone remember agenda 21?
It would be disturbing if the aspirations of the plan failed to match those of the act. In their current form, the aspirations contained in these instruments are underwhelming in the extent to which they embody the social and environmental values which we as a society must embrace if we are to face the challenges ahead. I am sick of these being called marginal.
The objects clauses contained in this section and in chapter 2 do not appear to contain any internal mechanisms that would militate towards the realisation of the Chief Minister’s no doubt sincere efforts to achieve affordable housing outcomes. His oft-repeated commitment to achieving affordable housing outcomes sits oddly with this planning legislation, which has a glaring paucity of statutory obligations to consider social outcomes in planning decisions.
I want to remind people, in this very large discourse on planning—I am going back to a thesis that I presented in April 1994—that planning is essentially a political process. It is about who gets what and who decides who gets what. The planners’ action
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