Many of the economic aims stated in the Canberra: A Capital Future (ACT Strategic Plan) are vital for Canberra, particularly its young people.
As the plan says, we really must diversify and expand the economic base of the ACT; be less dependent on Commonwealth activity; build on Canberra’s role as capital and build on the highly education and skilled workforce.
And as the plan suggests, governments must look beyond the next election to a 10 or 15 year time frame. (I’d argue for an even longer one.)
It was a fine things, therefore, that the ACT Government (including its bureaucracy much of whose personnel will stay while governments come and go) together with the Commonwealth Government set out in December last year to lay down a strategic plan. It is important for existing business and new investors to, within reason, have some idea of a consistent economic direction. That lessens risk and makes investment more attractive.
In December last year the National Capital Beyond 2000 Inception Report was published. It said “”It is important for government, business and the community to have an agreed set of economic, social, cultural and environmental objectives.”” (True enough, provided there is enough room for continued debate on particular issues as they arise, as befits a democratic society.)
To this end the Inception Report promised to publish options and to seek public comment on them and on draft options. That did not happen. Nor was there involvement of the Assembly and Federal parliamentary committees, as promised. The timetable of the Inception Report had the process ending in September. The Commonwealth was one of the delaying factors, but then there was a Federal election in that period. The Commonwealth input was still being gathered together, and would have required a couple more months. But rather than wait, the ACT Government decided to go it alone.
Chief Minister Kate Carnell said, “”A clear statement of the ACT Government’s intent and strategic direction for Canberra must be made now, with or without the Commonwealth Government’s endorsement.”
Now? In the second week of December, just as the nation is about to go into holiday mode for a month or two.
Why is it so urgent that a strategic document laying out plans for 10 to 15 years cannot wait a couple of months for the Commonwealth’s response. What is a couple of months’ wait in such a context compared to the importance of getting Commonwealth agreement?
What has been the effect of this go-it-alone approach and the failure to engage the legislatures of the two levels of government and the failure to get public response?
We saw it yesterday. The business community applauded and said what a wonderful strategic plan. In the words of Canberra Business Council executive director Ossie Kleinig, “”It could have been written from the files of the council.”
The residents’ and community groups umbrella (Save Our City), the ACT Opposition, a federal senator and the independent who heads the key Assembly committee (Michael Moore) gave it the thumbs down. Even the Housing Industry Association expressed reservations.
Now, you cannot please all of the people all of the time. But to embark on building a strategy to get broad support for an economic, social and environmental strategy and end up with huge applause from business and condemnation from everyone else cannot be counted as a success, except, of course, those who put it together. The chair of the task force’s consultative committee, Colin Freeland, said the document is one “”reflecting the views and aspirations of the broader community”. Palpable nonsense. Yesterday’s reaction reveals the narrow view it truly reflects.
The tragedy here is that the strategy is now self-defeating on two fronts.
Business wants certainty on future directions, but it can only get certainty if there is broad agreement. Here there is no broad agreement, so the very certainty that business wants will go out the window as opposition, and therefore obstruction, of business will grows in the Assembly, in federal parliamentary committees and among residents. It will be like the first draft of the Territory Plan under Labor … dubbed the developers’ blueprint … which slowly and painfully unravelled at great cost through failure to get broad agreement through consensus and compromise. There is no certainty in getting your own way; there is only certainty in an agreed compromise.
Secondly, the strategy, in its own words, says it requires Commonwealth action to succeed. “”The key approach to implementation of this strategic plan is a partnership between governments (plural!), business, national institutions and the community”. The strategy requires “”clearing house” meetings between the Secretary of PM & C and the Chief Minister’s Department. But the Commonwealth has not agreed to the strategy.
The aim of the strategy was to inspire business confidence. But if you cannot follow the plan to make a plan, what confidence will that inspire the final plan itself?
What we have here is not an agreed strategy for the ACT, but a Liberal Government and business manifesto and wish list. That’s fine if we get the label right.
The elements that the Government has not got broad agreement on are likely to remain contentious: in-fill and the abandonment of decentralisation.
It is a pity that the Government has agreed to narrow interests on those two things when it has done pretty well in other economic fronts. Its hi-tech push in Symonston (development within the existing envelope) and the deal with Unisys was spot on. It built on the assets of the city and diversified employment.
Its push for the high-speed rail and airport upgrade has been commendable. As has its recognition of the structural financial deficit of the city and the need to do something about it.
On in-fill (now called intensification, following the pattern of renaming ugly things to dupe people), the essential problem has been a long history of much of business opposing two successful elements of Canberra: leasehold and decentralisation, and doing their damnedest to undermine them.
Business prefers a large CBD with thousands of people fighting through traffic and congestion to get to work each day. They do not care about the environmental, social and economic costs of this inefficiency, provided land values go up and they can make speculative, unearned gains. They hate leasehold because, if administered properly, it, too, can eliminate speculative, unearned gains. Leasehold controls changes to individual parcels of land. Freehold and zone give a speculative killing upon rezoning to a whole area to those who redevelop while penalising those who want to stay in their existing dwelling with higher rates and loss of amenity.
Businesses that make profit through effort and ingenuity, on the other hand, should applaud leasehold because it reduces a major business cost … land.
Speculators like open slather to redevelop large areas (because building is cheaper on a large scale) and they do not like planning rules, preferring “”flexibility”, which means the flexibility to cram as many units as possible on a block and flexibility for slab development of blocks of units.
Diversity and rules that demand high-quality design are an anathema to the speculator, but in the long run they are better for the economic, environmental and social health of the city.
The ACT Strategic Plan sides with the speculators and the centralisers against the decentralisers and those who insist on better design. The plan wants to intensify Civic (even to the extent of questioning the policy on encouraging national associations to come to Canberra, particularly in Deakin and Barton). Intensifying Civic will enrich the few and the cost of the many.
In the past five years the failure to push a proper decentralisation program for Gungahlin is now visiting problems upon us. Opportunities to place ACT and Commonwealth employment in Gungahlin were overridden by selfish people. Gungahlin still has no town centre. The profit goes to people who have property in Civic and Dickson (the closest places) to the detriment of the people of Gungahlin.
The plan’s solution is not to create employment in Gungahlin, but to allow unfettered growth in Civic, thereby unnecessarily creating artificial demand for a private-sector public-transport link to skim off the profit leaving low-use sectors to ACTION.
This strategy is despite the plan’s own figures showing the success of Canberra’s employment decentralisation in the 1970s with people finding work nearer home. Moreover, the intensification is proposed without costing the inevitable requirement for renewed infrastructure.
That said, the plan is right to recommend greater mixing of residential, retail and office uses. But this can and should be done without pulling down swathes of singles residences.
The questions now are what will be the Commonwealth’s response and what will the Assembly, in which the Government does not have a majority, do.
A plan is only a plan without wherewithal and agreement to implement it.