One of the keys to Gary Humphries’ proposal to virtually wipe the planning slate clean and start again depends on a change of Government at the Federal level.
There are too many political ties between it and the National Capital Planning Authority board for it to agree to it abolition. The board has had some good members with a great deal of expertise from time to time. But it has also had some appointments with strong Labor connections. And that is not likely to change in the future.
Under the Humphries proposal the National Capital Planning Authority and the Act Planning Authority would be scrapped and replaced with one Canberra Planning Authority. Its independent board would have federal and local board members and a chair who would be seen as a representative of neither.
Humphries sees the division of planning control between the national and ACT bodies as a key reason for some of Canberra’s planning failures. He says this is one of the reasons planning has lacked long-term vision in Canberra.
Certainly Humphries is right in saying the split structure has not worked well since self-government in 1989. However, that might be more due to failings on the ACT side than the nature of having two structures.
The ACT side never lived up to the spirit of the 1988 Federal law that created the two bodies: the Australian Capital Territory Land and Planning Act. That Act gave some details about how the NCPA would work. In particular it provided for a full-time chief executive and a board which would met regularly to give independent advice and direction. The organisation was answerable to Parliament directly rather than through a Minister.
The Act also provided that the ACT would create an ACT Planning Authority but left its structure unspoken for. The first ACT Government created the absolute bare minimum: one person called the chief planner. There was no board and no separate staff. The authority had to call upon departmental staff. In short, the authority was subsumed and ran just like a government department of lands in the states, with one proviso.
The proviso was that the federal law required the creation of a Territory Plan. More of that anon. If the ACT Planning Authority had been set up in a similar way as the National Capital Planning Authority, a lot of the strife might have been avoided, especially if some care had been taken to chose an apolitical board. As it was the first territory plan did not have that input.
The plan was also driven by a Government 50-50 policy _ 50 per cent greenfields and 50 per cent infill development. The latter came in the form of building in open spaces within the existing city boundary and by permitted extra dwellings in existing suburban backyards and demolition and replacement with multiple dwellings on one or more blocks.
The plan has been the subject of anger by residential groups and false expectations by developers and frustration by both.
It first form was a developers’ blue print. Residents groups by-and-large did not understand or did not care about the plan while it was being drawn up _ other than complaints about a few precious green spots targeted for development (the pink bits in the plan). But they sure did complain when they heard specific plans about the place next door. Developers felt aggrieved because they thought the plan gave them the go-ahead. And it did on paper.
Some of the residents’ complaints have been met by the Landsdown inquiry, particularly the cutting back on dual occupancy. However, other issues remain unresolved.
If Humphries is relying on the joint authority, they are unlikely to get resolved. The NCPA is an odd beast. After its first couple of years it was threatened with extinction. It was thought it had done its plan and was no longer needed. It also had a very unsympathetic minister in Ros Kelly. Kelly saw it as getting in the way of the sorts of development that could help her politically by providing construction jobs. When Brian Howe took it under his wing, it flourished as an ideas hothouse for the Better Cities program. But now Howe is out of the limelight and Better Cities is no longer immune from budgetary constraints. It means the NCPA will have to stand on its Canberra function.
To a large extent it has done that by pushing the Central National Area program which has put a raft of ideas about what central Canberra should aim for in the next 50 years. It can no long be accused of not having a vision or not having long-range ideas. However, it is still has some bureaucratic insecurity. It has had an acting chief executive, Gary Prattley, for nearly three years _ in defiance of the spirit of its legislation, if not the letter of it. The law requires that no-one act for more than a year, so a different person stands in for a week or two every 11 months or so. It will need a permanent chief executive to deal with the Humphries plan _ either to embrace and survive it or fight it.
How one would deal with the cost split up and conflicting ministerial and parliamentary directives is anyone’s guest. In any event, the Humphries proposal will stir some bureaucratic nests. It would be better, however, if he concentrated and fixed up the ACT system rather than tilting at federal windmills.
One that question he has out forward several key proposals:
1. Making the ACT Planning Authority a stand-alone authority.
2. Setting up local-area planning.
3. Setting maximum as well as minimum dwelling numbers on each site (including greenfields sites).
4. Having a two-step process: a development application and a building application, rather than the present design and siting, lease variation, heritage and building applications.
5. Replacing the Planning Appeals Board function with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
A separate planning authority has several advantages. First, it can put a long-range view about the city as a whole and some of the individual areas in it. Secondly, it can rise above mere land-use questions and placing buildings in building envelopes on blocks. Thirdly, an independent board meeting, say, monthly can put some fresh air and vigorous questioning to the executive and staff, provided, of course, the board is of high quality. Most staff and executives of most authorities hate the board and its meetings because they are prodded and made to justify themselves. Fourthly, an authority can rise above the political and other pressures of going easy on particular developments at particular times because it is answerable to the Parliament not directly to the Minister.
If Mr Humphries is to set up this separate, stand-alone authority he will have to start from scratch. Local area planning was recommended by the Robert Landsdown’s inquiry and accepted by the previous government.
Landsdown found that one of the great failings of the Territory Plan was that it attempted to apply similar redevelopment rules throughout Canberra.
The plan arose after a climate of huge uncertainty for developers, especially developers of commercial buildings, after the Supreme Court ruled against developments in Civic. Developers asked for a got certainty in the first draft of the plan. Basically, if you fitted the building envelope and other set criteria you could build.
Of course, what was suitable for inner suburbs was not for outer ones. Some areas had special characteristics (large the large blocks in Red Hill) which were threatened by redevelopment on the Canberra-wide rules.
The advantage of local-area planning is that residents get interested early. Few ordinary residents will take an active interest in a Canberra-wide plan, but they will get involved if it will directly affects them. The Humphries plan will put all multi-dwelling developments before committees of local residents for advice.
Handled well, it could relieve a lot of anger and save costs for developers. Indeed, some of the residents’ ideas might make developments more marketable. The consistent message over the past five years is that people do not mind a reasonable about of tasteful medium density development. In fact, in many places they would welcome it, provided they are satisfied about car-parking, sunlight an noise _ things that a good planning authority can insist on without recourse to black-letter law and things that most competent architects could deal with most of the time if relieved of developer pressure to cram as many dwellings on the block as possible. To that end Humphries is insisting on maximum as well as minimum dwelling numbers.
Some developer frustration arises when they obey all the rules and still get knocked back after residents kick up a fuss. A lot of money gets tied up which ultimately gets passed on to new residents. The residents have argued that the ruled are dud and they been justified to the extent that the rules have had to be changed several times. If proposals go through local residents committees at an early stage a lot of this frustration will be avoided.
There is a downside. Humphries’ plan to allow mobile homes in back gardens is Third World, at a time when there is no housing shortage.
He has not addressed the betterment issue. Too often in the past the community’s land value has been allowed to go cheap to a privileged few. However, there is a case for providing incentives for more efficient land uses short of the heavy hand of lease resumption. Fifty per cent is too low; 100 per cent is too high.
Last but not least, Humphries’ plan to replace the Planning Appeals Board with the AAT will bring the lawyers (and therefore extra cost and delay) back into the process. It will also disempower less articulate and poorer residents. That said, the board was by no means perfect.