Page 1441 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2017
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issues that will be important to the Greens. And I anticipate that we will be supporting some of the amendments that the Liberal Party will be moving.
Our amendments fall into a number of categories: the need for commercial returns; environmental sustainability; affordable and social housing; and governance, as mentioned by Mr Coe. I will briefly give an overview of these issues, noting that we are going to discuss these in more detail at the detail stage, which I understand will be on Thursday.
Let me go to the need for commercial returns. The Greens support the need for government to raise revenue. We also recognise that ACT land is a finite resource and thus should be sold for an appropriate value. However, as I mentioned, there is a perception in the community that the Land Development Agency was driven largely by financial interests and did not operate within a rigorous and community-endorsed planning framework. The current proposed legislation says that one of the three objects for both authorities is “to operate commercially, in accordance with sound risk management principles”. The Greens believe very strongly that this must be balanced with other responsibilities for the new bodies so that we do not end up with, in effect, two new LDAs that prioritise commercial returns and new developments that fail to apply the ACT’s existing policies on carbon neutrality, housing affordability and community engagement.
I go to environmental sustainability. I know it has been said before, but there is no planet B. Without drastic changes in the world’s resource use, the future does not look good for humans and many other species. The Greens feel that, because the SLA and the CRA will have major roles in determining the future built environment for the ACT, it is important that their guiding legislation puts the onus on them to deliver good environmental outcomes—in particular, policies such as carbon neutrality.
Although the government has many whole-of-government policies, it is not always clear which of them are the most important for the government to deliver. Although, like all government authorities, these new authorities should certainly follow government policies, because of the importance of these environmental and social policies to the CRA’s and SLA’s mandate we think it is important to underline this in the legislation. Affordable housing, designing future suburbs with ageing and the safety of women in mind and, of course, environmental sustainability are all policies which need to be front and centre in planning and development.
Let me go to affordable and social housing. The Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement commits the government to “set affordable housing targets across greenfield and urban renewal development projects”. Of course, the Greens see this bill as the perfect opportunity to ensure that this happens. We have proposed that they should become part of the ministerial directions to both the City Renewal Authority and the Suburban Land Agency. Setting concrete targets for both social housing and affordable housing will help Canberra secure affordable housing, community-owned housing and public housing stock as part of any major development of land. I understand that the Labor Party has taken up part of these proposals, which will be discussed in detail on Thursday.
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