Page 2234 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 1 August 2017
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The lease variation charge is one area where modelling clearly should not just include financial impacts. For a long time we have been discussing in this place and in the community how our city is changing—whether we want urban consolidation at all or whether we are happy to see Canberra continue in the greenfields forever and ever. I think there is a reasonable degree of consensus that we want at least some urban consolidation. I think there is still an ongoing debate as to how much and where, but I think there is clear consensus that we would like to see it.
In respect of the lease variation charge, it has certainly been put to me that the government’s proposed change to the lease variation charge will mean that small-scale redevelopment of existing blocks—be they RZ1, 2 or 3—becomes economically impractical. It has been suggested that the only redevelopments that will happen will be either very large ones in commercial areas or ones that will construct very large luxury accommodation—as it were, townhouses.
In a community that is ageing and where there is a real need for appropriate accommodation in local suburban areas that people can downsize to, it is somewhat hard to see that it is the public policy we want that people might downsize from an ex-govie, which is probably about 100 or 110 square metres, to a townhouse which is larger. It just has a smaller amount of garden. “Crazy” sort of comes to mind. I call upon the government to look clearly at what the results, both financially and to the development of our city, will be or could be from this proposed change.
The next recommendation I would like to talk about is again a planning-related change. Recommendation 88 states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government works with the owners of the Ginninderry development and Dr Jason Sharples to reassess the bushfire risk at the Ginninderry site and undertake the necessary planning adjustments in response to the findings of Dr Sharples’ 2017 report.
Bushfire risk is a really important issue. I am particularly mindful of this, having listened to the condolence motion and speeches about Val Jeffery earlier today. Bushfires are an issue for the environment around us. Ginninderry is part of that. It really behoves us to make sure that we do not construct residences in areas which are likely to be burnt. Dr Sharples has done a very useful report. I think it is very important that this be taken into account in the Ginninderry development.
Next I turn to recommendations 95 and 96, which are both about heritage. My major comment on these recommendations is this: in the Seventh Assembly, which I was a member of, we basically made the same recommendations about heritage. Nothing has changed. We need to put the resources in to try to progress heritage, rather than have a never-ending backlog that goes nowhere.
The next recommendation, recommendation 100, is one that we would not have considered in the previous Seventh Assembly. It states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government consider how they plan to maintain 100 per cent renewable electricity post 2020.
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