The opposition to the ugly mobile-phone telecommunications towers continues. Now Queanbeyan Council is seeking legal advice about what can be done to make the telecommunications companies less gung-ho.
After Canberra protests about the towers, Planning Minister Bill Wood approached the Federal Government to see what could be done. It was generally thought that nothing could be done because Commonwealth telecommunications law broadly said that the companies could put their towers where they liked irrespective of territory or state planning law.
However, the ACT unlike anywhere else in Australia has some Commonwealth Planning law called the Australian Capital Territory Planning and Land Management Act. This sets up the National Capital Planning Authority which has drawn up a plan which has been approved by Parliament and has the force of law.
That plan provides that before any network of major telecommunications structures go up there must be a plan worked by the NCPA with the ACT Government and the telecommunications industry.
The Feds agreed this must be done before more of these towers go up. About 30 or 40 of them are planned on the hills throughout Canberra.
Wood was able to tell the Assembly last week that he had had a constructive meeting with senior representatives of the telecommunications companies. No doubt it was “”constructive” because he had a good law to beat them around the head with. Otherwise, he would not have been in much of a position to help his constituents.
Queanbeyan is in a different position, legally. The National Capital Plan does not apply there and the telecommunications companies are exempt from NSW planning law.
But it can take a certain amount of political joy from what has happened in Canberra. If it is good enough for Canberra to have a planning process for the towers, why not NSW. It is a powerful argument politically because most state and federal MPs hate Canberra and its privileged position. Here is a chance to bring the states to the same level.
The ACT has been able to stop the willy-nilly placement of towers more by luck than foresight.
But it is not as if they were not told.
In March, 1992, the Canberra branch of the Australian Computing Society made a submission to the ACT Government saying that a telecommunications plan should be drafted and made part of the Territory Plan. A copy was sent to me the other day.
“”Just as we need to plan for roads, water and power we also need to plan for telecommunications,” the society’s Tom Worthington wrote. “”Much of the use for and type of technology is unpredictable.”
He argued that the plan must do more than consider aesthetics.
The submission went beyond the issue of telecommunications towers, but called for some thought to future developments in fibre optics and other cable deliveries and in satellite delivery to ensure buildings and roads to not prohibit intelligent future telecommunications uses.
A lot in the submission still holds true. The ACT Government has gone some way with experiments in Gungahlin on telecommunications delivery.
With proper telecommunications planning, he argued, Canberra would get a competitive edge over other cities because new technologies would be easier and cheaper to install.
Canberra will inevitably continue to be the site of some of the most vigorous objection to telecommunications equipment. Of its nature, through-the-air telecommunications needs high obtrusive transmission and receiving equipment. And Canberra’s nature conflicts with that because it has been planned on the basis of no building on the hills.
The obtrusiveness of the Black Mountain Tower is the exception which proves the value of the rule.
The technological advance in telecommunications that the people of Canberra and its planners would welcome most would be enough fibre optic and satellite transmission to make the Black Mountain tower redundant so it can be dismantled.