Page 2478 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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as many people under the age of 30 at the moment who have bought properties, as has happened lately. I think that we have to strike a very careful balance. The Follett solution is long remembered; it cost a lot of us a lot of money in the nineties. Mr Stefaniak will remember that era: people ended up taking a bath on their property sales, thanks to poor management by the territory Labor government. Eventually Mr Berry had to step into the role and try and salvage the place.
The fact of the matter is that we hope the minister is careful in the way he proceeds. These instant magical solutions the Chief Minister keeps clinging to, because economics is not his forte, as we know, will not be foisted on the Canberra people without a lot of very careful consideration for the overall impact. We are looking for solutions to the problem without chaos being caused. I think at this point, Mr Speaker, I have probably said enough. I look forward to hearing what the minister has to say.
DR FOSKEY (Molonglo) (5.57): When the issue of englobo land sales was raised in the estimates process the Chief Minister said that, if the results are not adequate, then the policy would be reviewed. I hope sufficient attention and resources are committed to the ongoing assessment of the adequacy of englobo developments against environmental and social outcomes.
We have been promised many things by the development lobby in the past and have been routinely disappointed on numerous occasions. When englobo releases were in full swing in the 1990s, developers would build one or two demonstration homes which had the full panoply of environmental features: solar passive siting and design, intelligent venting systems, grey water recycling and so on. Unfortunately the rest of the homes in the suburb all faced the road regardless of solar orientation; they had minimal insulation and no privacy. Concrete dominated the landscape and dwellings were packed in to maximise profits. People visiting these suburbs for the first time remark on the narrowness of the roads and the lack of footpaths. Is this not a kind of a theft of public space? It is certainly a reduction in public amenity and a real obstacle to sustainable transport.
These suburbs have no stormwater retention, few green spaces and they are not pedestrian, public transport or bicycle friendly. When asked to justify englobo land sales in terms of their benefit to the community, the Chief Minster said that the industry have been pushing hard for englobo sales and they insist that competition will deliver fast, affordable and high quality housing developments—just what Mr Mulcahy has been saying, I think. The industry would say that, wouldn’t they? The last planning minister was not convinced of their claims and perhaps the development lobby wanted to remove him from the planning portfolio. Again, going back to what Mr Mulcahy said, it sounds as though that was the case; if so, they got their wish.
What should the community make of the high proportion of political funding that both the major parties receive from the development lobby? I wonder what they demand and what they get in return for their largesse. One is tempted to apply the duck test: if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, the odds are it is a duck.
At least with mandatory five-star requirements there is some reassurance that future profit-driven englobo developments will be guided by more than the lowest possible
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