Page 4143 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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often located near high schools, district playing fields and community facilities. The contraction of services such as banks and increased competition in supermarket retailing has led to a changing role for Canberra’s group centres. As a result, planning policies were revised in 2002 to increase the opportunities for retail and residential uses within the group centres and to help them retain their viability.
The function of local centres is perhaps the function most dramatically impacted upon by changes in the social and economic area. The function of local centres to meet convenience shopping needs and provide community and business services to meet the daily needs of the neighbourhoods has been put under pressure by changes in the way retailing delivers its services. This has meant often a reduction in the capacity of those centres to be viable. We have seen closures and we have seen a reduction in services. These have been driven by economic factors, not planning policies, and by social changes about where people choose to shop and the range of services and choice they expect when they do shop.
Of course, this has been to the detriment of those in our suburbs who do not have the same opportunities to get to larger centres. Those who are challenged in terms of their mobility in particular face real challenges in accessing services beyond their local centres because of these changes in service delivery. The size of local centres will no doubt change again as grocery shopping at local centres has declined. We will see further changes in the way retailing delivers its services to the community and in the way local centres operate.
In 1983 all local centres in Canberra central, Woden-Weston Creek and Belconnen had a supermarket—all of them in 1983. Ninety-five per cent had a butcher, three-quarters had a chemist, 80 per cent had hairdressers and 60 per cent had restaurants and cafes. Now, about 30 years later, only 20 per cent of local centres in these areas have a butcher, 40 per cent a chemist and 80 per cent a local supermarket. These are the impacts of the social and economic changes being brought on our local centres. As a result, the government has recognised the changed trading environments at local centres and has introduced a variety of measures to continue to support them. These include the widening of lease purpose clauses and the land uses permissible, incentives to undertake redevelopment, the development of vacant land, programs to upgrade public spaces and the provision of business advice.
Higher density housing adjacent to local centres is now supported to provide more people with good access to these centres. The government also considers the best way of assessing the impact of major new development proposals is through the independent development assessment process, as administered within the Environment and Sustainable Development Directorate. The assessment is aided by the availability of the commercial centres and industrial areas floor space inventory, which has been undertaken by our planning agencies since before self-government. Summaries of the 2009 and 2007 inventories are available on the ESDD website. A 2011 update of the inventory is currently being prepared and will be available before the end of this financial year.
So you can see, Mr Speaker, some of the challenges and some of the issues that are presented. I think it is entirely appropriate that the government work through its
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