Page 136 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
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… I am in full agreement with Caroline Le Couteur … It would be a great shame for the laws to be rolled back. They could be a little more flexible but it has been a shameful thing that Canberrans/builders have been allowed to build homes with no thought for solar passive designs …
He goes on to say in his letter to the editor:
We have built a “wedding cake” design, which we prefer to the “office block” style of homes, where the gutters almost touch. Our home lets the neighbours enjoy solar access, and we have the joy of winter sun warming our home.
We don’t use airconditioning and are coping well with ceiling fans in the heatwave. It is a pleasure to live in and we rest easy knowing we are using less energy.
That letter to the editor absolutely underlines what is trying to be achieved here: if you are thoughtful about design, you can have a perfectly comfortable, quite enjoyable home without necessarily having a detrimental impact on your neighbours. As to the comments about the office block versus the wedding cake, I suggest they are a matter of taste for individuals. Nonetheless, the point remains the same.
I note Mr Coe’s comments about the territory plan. I do not think anybody would argue that it is not complex. It is true that we have a planning system which is based on compliance with rules and regulations, sometimes at the expense of outcomes we want to achieve. I think it really comes down to the resourcing within ACTPLA, to have adequate staffing. I would welcome any moves to provide improved capacity to assess applications and have some flexibility in matching compliance with good design outcomes.
I note the comments Mr Barr made about the performance of the agency against the benchmarks it achieves in other jurisdictions. They are comments that are well worth taking on board as well.
When it comes to the lease variation charge, it is premised on the idea that developers should pay for the rights they are being granted by the community. The Greens very much agree with this principle, and believe there should be a balance between commercial realities and achieving a fair return for the community.
Greens’ amendments to the Planning and Development (Lease Variation Charges) Amendment Bill in 2011 were introduced to encourage development in strategic locations such as transport corridors and to encourage sustainable designs through exemptions and reductions to charges to act as a financial incentive for developments with sustainability outcomes. I think that is the way it should work. There needs to be a return to the community. If somebody is changing a lease purpose clause, it should not just be about windfall gains; there should be acknowledgement that the community should get a return from that. But the amendments we brought forward in 2011 were also about saying, “Let us be strategic about this and acknowledge that where there are particular benefits that we want, a discount is quite relevant.”
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