Page 3125 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
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In line with the Access Canberra Accountability Commitment and the supporting Building and Construction Services: Compliance Framework, Access Canberra has adopted a risk-based compliance approach to ensure that resources are targeted to where the risks of harm, unsafe practices or misconduct are the greatest, thereby strengthening capacity to take action where the community, workers and the environment are most at risk.
Access Canberra prioritises its actions based on a range of considerations, including the following:
• conduct that causes harm or risk to life, health or the environment;
• conduct that is systemic and is likely to have a detrimental effect on the community and/or the environment, and
• conduct that demonstrates a blatant disregard for the law.
On the basis of conversations about this not only in estimates but also in the annual reports, the impression I get is that Access Canberra is pretty much looking just at things that cause harm or risk to life and limb. I totally agree that that needs to be the number one priority. But I contend that non-adherence to DA conditions is systematic. I note that Ms Lawder is here also. Between the two of us, I am sure we could get a list together which would demonstrate that the word “systematic” is not unreasonable.
I also think that the conduct demonstrates blatant disregard for the law. Some of the things that I have seen photos of, you could not interpret in any way as being consistent with the DA as put in. It is simply blatant. It is systematic. If we are going to bother to have a planning system, and I do think we should continue to bother having a planning system, then we have to have some enforcement. We need to make, at the very least, an example of some of the more blatant problems. The whole system is becoming a bit of a joke. Builders know you can just build it and it will not really matter: you might get told off but that is the worst that is going to happen to you.
There are also gaps and concerns in relation to housing affordability. Mr Rattenbury’s budget reply speech identified that the government did not place sufficient emphasis on housing affordability. This, of course, is partly a planning issue.
Earlier this year I moved a motion about demonstration housing precincts. I think there is a real need for the government to take the lead on this and look at what we can build which will be more affordable and more environmentally sustainable. This is something that the Institute of Architects has called for. There has been the NEAT scheme, which got together a range of possible buildings to do this. I am very disappointed that the government has as yet not acted on this, and I call again on the government to act on this.
Trees is an area where we have not put enough focus and where more work is required from an EPSDD point of view. We need to make sure that our new housing developments have enough space for trees, whether they are on private land or on street verges. Both of these are being squashed, with an end result that there are fewer trees in our new areas.
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