Page 2479 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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standards that the market will bear. But if effective and responsible greenhouse gas emission targets are to have any hope of being met, the government will have to legislate to force developers and home builders to comply with minimum standards. It will not happen on its own; the market will not deliver. ACTPLA has a brief to provide leadership, and this is one area where leadership is absolutely critical. In the absence of leadership, we can be quite sure that self-interest and the profit motive will normally trump the broader community interest.
ACTPLA and the LDA should be directed to take a very hands-on oversight role to ensure that future developments will deliver on what the Chief Minister described as the industry’s vehement claims that they would match, if not exceed, standards established by the LDA. Words are cheap and the government has been deceived before. Why not include punitive breach of promise clauses into the englobo sales contracts that would entitle the government to recover the costs of rectifying any shortcomings and put developers on notice that this time there will be adverse consequences for failing to deliver on their promises?
The people of Canberra have said on numerous occasions that they do not trust the planning authority to communicate with or respond to community concerns. These views have been confirmed by a number of independent reports, including the Artcraft report in 2004, the National Institute for Governance report in 2003, the Auditor-General’s report into the development application and approval process and the Auditor-General’s report into the sale of block 8, section 48.
At 6.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
DR FOSKEY: What was the government’s response? It implemented a planning system model concocted largely by the federal government and the Australian Property Council which reduces the opportunities for community input, privatises various regulatory functions and removes most of the remaining mechanisms for community consultation. There go some of the best safeguards against inappropriate housing and commercial development proposals. I do not see much evidence in this budget that the government appreciates that it now bears even greater responsibility in delivering on social and environmental outcomes.
The planning minister claims that he is treading the middle path between the Greens and the Liberals and therefore he must have it right. But the truth is that there is barely room for daylight between the policies of the Labor and Liberal parties, as evidenced by the tenor and minimal content of the many amendments proposed by Mr Seselja in Tuesday’s debate—most of them on behalf, it seemed, of the property lobby in the ACT.
I do not understand why ACTPLA has abandoned neighbourhood planning. It had seemed an acceptable fine-grained approach to suburban redevelopment. I understand that neighbourhood planning processes are labour intensive, but the benefits of these intensive consultation processes in goodwill alone are surely great enough to warrant finetuning the system rather than abandoning it.
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