Page 1780 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 April 2009
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widely agreed that there is a backlog of development applications, which need to be attacked with gusto. There is a huge number of development applications in the system, and I still maintain that ACTPLA should just employ some more people until they are up to date.
The Greens support the federal stimulus package funding for schools and social housing. However, the government also needs to recognise that private money is just as capable of stimulating the economy and that ACTPLA should be doing its best to help those projects get underway. It would be terrible to hold them up for so long that the funding options for these developments disappear, which we know is a real threat in the current financial situation.
I thank the minister for putting on the record how the various track systems work, and they do appear to be working in general. I certainly support exemptions which are the truly non-controversial developments, as I am sure the developers and the rest of the community do as well. However, the Greens are watching, and will continue to watch with great interest, the new regulations for further exemptions, which the government has been putting up over the past few months.
Although streamlining processes can make it easier all round, the Greens are keen to ensure that measures which enforce sustainable building and design are retained. One concern I note, which I am afraid is perhaps the opposite of streamlining, is what has happened to my favourite topic for this week, energy efficiency ratings. Once upon a time, before the Building Code of Australia required energy efficiency, in the ACT house plans were assessed up-front for their energy efficiency. It was part of the DA process, so it happened before they were built. However, now that energy efficiency is part of the Building Code of Australia and not part of the DA process, energy efficiency is basically assessed after the building is built, which means that, if the building did not meet the standards, it may actually be too late to fix it. For this reason, New South Wales is using the BASIX system for rating houses up-front for energy and water efficiency and I suggest that we should look at the New South Wales system for ideas in this context.
I note the minister’s comments on consultation and commend ACTPLA’s initiatives to improve the public notification mechanisms. Additional thoughts on this are that the public notification notices should be published in the Chronicle as well as the Canberra Times, given that basically every household in Canberra gets a copy of the Chronicle for no charge. Also at present only houses directly adjoining a development are required to be notified of the development, whereas actually residents in a much broader area can in fact be affected by a development.
I join with the minister in commending the structure of the new territory plan and how it collapses a huge number of plans, codes and guidelines into one, still huge, three-volume set of folders. Although it is sizeable, it does make it much clearer to anyone with any interest in planning which plans, codes and guidelines apply to which developments.
We were disappointed not to see a reference to neighbourhood planning or master planning as part of the statement. This is part of the Labor-Greens agreement and we
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