Page 3129 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 22 August 2017
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And we certainly agree with Mr Rattenbury on that position.
More recently, the minister has discussed the salt and pepper principle by saying:
Typically, new developments will range from 14 to 25 dwellings. This will be vital to ensuring we do not return to the days of high density multi-unit properties.
This certainly flies in the face of some information that we got at a briefing on this matter where there was a maximum figure of 50 discussed.
The minister has clearly reflected the government’s views that public housing complexes should not be large-scale concentrations but, rather, the salt and pepper strategy which was aimed at community integration in much smaller numbers of units or houses. The ideal of Mr Rattenbury’s 15 units has generally given way to developments twice this size, although they do tend to move in size from week to week in areas like Holder, Wright and Chapman, some of which, as I said, have been ratcheted back to about 20 units as a result of reactive consultation with local residents.
Many of these developments are occurring of course, as Ms Lawder mentioned, on community facility zoned land. The public and especially local communities in proximity to community facility zoned land had the impression that this zoning category could only be used for the traditionally understood meaning of community purposes. By way of example, the planning documents—and we have been through this on a number of occasions—referred to things like community activity centres, a community theatre, educational establishments and the like. Multi-unit housing, as we know, was prohibited along with serviced apartments, single-dwelling houses and activities of a commercial nature.
The siting of public housing developments has always been, it must be said, a bit of a headache, not just for this government but for most. But for this government it has been a headache. If you develop public housing on land zoned for residential purposes, then you forgo a profitable sale of that land. In order to resolve this dilemma, the government engineered a manoeuvre in the form of the technical amendment to the territory plan that Ms Lawder mentioned earlier. This amendment extended the definition of supportive housing to include “social housing” in the common terminology.
The amendment in question can be found at the 36th page of the 124 pages of endnotes to the Territory Plan, making it a daunting forensic exercise to actually find this adjustment. It is my understanding that the Planning and Development Act essentially confines technical amendments to those which clarify the language of the Territory Plan and not its substance. This stunt has made it much easier to pillage community facility zoned land for standard residential developments for public housing, but this was not considered a change of substance to the Territory Plan, merely a clarification of language.
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