Page 2830 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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where the government buildings currently are, they are on Northbourne Avenue, they are in Dickson, they are in Woden, they are in Belconnen and they are mainly on what could only be described as good sites. I can hear the excitement at the concept of the redevelopments already.
One of the things that I am concerned about with the potential new government office building is that the government does not seem to have a strategy to increase local employment in town centres. In this, I point particularly to Gungahlin. When I asked about it at estimates, LAPS did not even seem to think that a government priority should in fact be to strengthen the Gungahlin economy and workforce. It is also disappointing to hear that the government has not considered that the reduction of transport pressure into the city involves increasing employment in Gungahlin town centre in the context of this new office building proposal, although in this context it is pleasing to see that a large parcel of land in the Gungahlin town centre, enough to fit two sites, has been set aside for commercial purposes. However, on the same note but on a different side of town, Molonglo appears to be being planned to have the same problem—that it will have little or no local employment.
Moving on with urban infill opportunities, it is pleasing to see that the government are actually giving a little bit of thought to that. I am particularly glad to see that they have been thinking about how they are going to manage some of the community consultation aspects of this. As we in this place are all aware, while many people support urban infill in principle, when it comes to actually developing a block near their house, it just becomes a bit more difficult, and the objections come. So I am very pleased to see that there is a plan to give people a year’s notice when the government are planning to infill certain areas, which should help.
But there is more to the urban density challenge than just consultation. I believe there is also a strong need for large-scale community fora, as well as public education, to discuss the future of Canberra’s residential growth and its implications. I guess that consultation and education need to happen within the ACT government as well, because I note that the government is planning 17,000 greenfield sites to be released over the next four years, and the government is supposedly committed to fifty-fifty greenfield and infill development. Currently we are having at least 90 per cent greenfield development. I really would like to see LAPS—LAPS, plus the LDA, in particular—looking at how are we actually going to achieve this, because there does not seem to be a plan to do it at this stage.
In fact, you could argue we are even planning not to do it. I refer here to change of use charges. This is something that makes me wonder whether the government considers the impact of its policies in one area on its policies in other areas. With change of use there does not appear so far to have been any analysis or modelling of the impact of the change of use charge, which admittedly has been part of our planned legislation for a number of years but, we have been told, has not been applied properly.
Has there been any modelling done by the government of the impacts of rectification—of applying it properly? Has there been any modelling of the impact on urban infill of the proposed codification program? It appears at this stage, having asked these questions in estimates, that there has not. While I appreciate, with this,
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