Page 3512 - Week 11 - Thursday, 19 September 2013
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admitted in hearings, every tax has an effect. Every tax has a drag. We are seeing that drag now. We are seeing it in the government not getting the DAs they thought they would get in the redevelopment. What it does is it forces sprawl. People are forced to go to the perimeters of the city. Cities that get bigger are harder to support. Of course, it is contradictory to some of the bits that are mentioned in the charter of new urbanism from the congress. It is about population and it is about density.
There are also the issues like visual pollution. Canberra used to be free of a lot of visual pollution, but everywhere you look now there is this plethora of signs appearing everywhere. There is a sign for everything. There is that song, “Signs, signs, they are everywhere.” If it is not signs, in the case of the people in Uriarra it is a solar farm right in their front yards. You have to take into account the urban amenity wherever these things occur. I think, particularly for the people of Uriarra, that they would be wondering about their urban environment right at this time and who is going to protect them. Clearly from yesterday’s debate, those opposite are not interested.
There is visual pollution. There are a number of texts being written now on gentrification of suburbs and about how we get suburbs to renew, how we get population back into them, how we do not lose the values of those suburbs in the changing times. There is work that needs to be done on that.
The government and the Greens say, “We have got capital metro.” What are the impacts of the metro? When will we have some honesty about how wide the renewals have to be to make this train work? When will they communicate that to the people? It is not 100 metres. It is not just the block on either side of Northbourne Avenue. It probably extends 700 to 1,000 metres either side of Northbourne Avenue. There must be significant uplift to make this work and make it pay.
I wonder whether the people in those suburbs down Northbourne Avenue—Braddon, Turner, Dickson and Lyneham—are truly aware of what the impact of that will be. Have they had reasonable warning and discussion about it? I suspect the answer is no. Again, you have to look at the urban environment. Would people consider that a reasonable thing to get a train set? Or would they like to leave it that way and look at other options—indeed, the preferred option that Mr Corbell had until his road to Damascus or in this case his train to Damascus? He was in favour of a better bus system.
There is this whole issue of gentrification, how it happens and, indeed, how it is paid for. Again, the lease variation tax is a tax against density. It is so counterintuitive. I would have thought that the economic guru that the Treasurer would like to be thought of would say that this is counterintuitive. He says, “We want densification because densification along service carriageways will pay for transport upgrades but we are going to tax it.” You cannot have your cake and eat it too, but that appears to be the case here.
Then there is the issue of the city itself. There is always comment from people, particularly visitors, that they were through Civic before they even knew it. Where is the Civic centre? Great cities have great city hearts. They have locations that you go to that are synonymous with the city. You cannot go to Sydney and not go to the
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