Residents putting up a garage are required to engage in more community consultation than was done before the futsal sporting stadium was approved and construction begun on Lake Burley Griffin foreshore at Acton Park. As Labor’s planning spokesperson Roberta McRae said, “”It is normally almost impossible to get permission to plant an extra tree in the national area.”
In the past people wanting to anything at all in the central national area have been beset with what they might see as bureaucratic obstacles, but are there to protect national-capital standards. But now the National Capital Authority has dropped the word “”planning” from its title it seems to have dropped it from its functions, despite statutory obligations to the contrary, and it has become little more than a national tourism promoter.
That is not to say that the project is without merit. It has several worthwhile points.
It is going on land that is otherwise vacant and surrounded by plenty more vacant land and with many nearby carparks that stand virtually vacant at weekends when the futsal stadium is likely to be used. Its only permanent mark will be the concrete playing field; the seating for 10,000 is temporary and will be carried away when the stadium is not in use.
The stadium will bring some more life to the central national area. The area is very large compared to other major cities and its features are too spread out to make walking between them more like a hard hike. It may be that the stadium can double as an outdoor theatre for cultural spectaculars and other events. The lake has a very large shoreline, very little of which is used in the way that other great cities use their waterways. The stadium has a magnificent backdrop so that when tournaments are televised, as they will be, Canberra will be projected in a better light to the nation and overseas.
The government clearly had a dilemma. It could have put the stadium on any amount of vacant land on the outskirts, but then it would not have attracted enough people or teams to be worthwhile. It could have had an extensive consultation process, but then it might have missed the boat for the September futsal tournaments. So it decided just to get on with it.
Canberra is a city of objectors and government might feel it is in the position that the only way to ever get anything done is to just do it, but the danger with that approach is that it can develop into a Joh Bjelke-Petersen mentality of unaccountability. It might be fine for a concrete slab on which to play football occasionally (and even then some would have concerns about its appropriateness in that national site), but it can lead to a more general cavalier attitude about building and land-use changes.
Even with the slab and temporary seating, it is bound to become “”too expensive” to move the seats. And then there will be a call for a roof. Before long a second-rate, tacky tin-shed stadium is in the national area. What might be next? The hilltops which give Canberra its essential bush-capital ambience?
The ACT Government is given extra money through the Grants Commission to pay for costs associated with higher national-capital requirements, so it should not complain if federal authorities insist on them.
The questions to be asked on this occasion is where was the joint parliamentary committee on the national capital and how does the NCA propose to ensure the seating remains temporary?
If the thing had been done more openly in the first place, the government might have found surprising community support for a little more life around the lake.