Neither but Kate Carnell nor Ros Kelly would like the comparison, but they have something in common.
Kelly, a minister in the Hawke and Keating Governments, was also the Member for Canberra which then took in Tuggeranong, Woden and most of South Canberra. She did not like the National Capital Planning Authority, and neither does Kate Carnell.
The reason is that the meddlesome federal planning body got in the way. They have seen its red tape, unnecessary idealism and duplication as preventing grand schemes or quick-fix announcements that would endear them to their publics and give favours to supporters: developers, unions, sporting bodies and the like.
Now Carnell has repeated her approach the Federal Government with a plan to reduce the power and influence of the NCPA so that the Territory Government can have less fettered control over land in the ACT. She wants areas over which the NCPA has a large degree of control to be handed to virtually total territory control.
She wants bucketloads of extinguishment of federal title.
First, it might be an idea to explain how federal and territory responsibilities over land are split.
This is complicated, so bear with me.
In 1989, parcels of land in the territory were identified as national land and the rest was called territory land.
The national land was for the special purposes of the national capital (parliament, the triangle, the war memorial and so on) and other Commonwealth purposes (defence, departmental offices etc).
On national land the feds have total control and ownership.
The territory is also divided into designated areas and non-designated areas. The designated areas are areas imbued with special characteristics of the national capital. Nearly all bits of national land are designated, but there is a whole lot of other land designated that is territory land.
Designated areas include the diplomatic area, Lake Burley Griffin, Russell, ADFA and the inner hills. In these areas, the National Capital Authority has planning control. That means new works and demolitions, including major landscaping must be approved by the NCA. Internal works need not be approved by the NCA. But once the works are completed the ACT Government has control and maintenance.
Then we have general planning policies set out in the NCA’s national capital plan that work throughout the territory. These determine which bits are rural, residential, commercial, hills and buffer and so on.
Carnell’s repeated appeal this week to the Prime Minister wants to restrict the national role in the territory to just seven defined areas: the triangle, main entrance roads, the war memorial, Russell-Duntroon, the Governor-General’s residence and the diplomatic area (but not the lake). The territory would control the rest with virtually no interference from federal authorities. Federal control through designated areas and general planning policies (particularly the inner hills, the city area and rural land) would be gone.
“”All areas of Canberra associated with its role as a city where people live and work should be very clearly become the responsibility of the ACT Government,” she wrote to Mr Howard. “”This would mean that areas throughout the suburbs, where previously the national Capital Authority and therefore the Commonwealth has had a dual role with the ACT Government, would become solely the responsibility of the ACT Government. This would mean that the days of wrangling over sites, wrangling over areas relating to development in the suburbs will be gone and the people of Canberra though their own government will very much become the masters of their own destiny.”
This idea is a denial of the very reason for having a federal capital territory. We are here because we are a national capital. That function overrides everything else.
The Carnell approach is to define some key bits of national-function land over which the feds have total control and the rest comes under total territory government control. What, then, is this non-national-government part of the ACT that controls its own destiny free from the fetters of national planning control? Why is it there?
Originally it was ceded from NSW for the purposes of creating a national capital. If it is not to serve that function it may as well go back to NSW and the people who live in the place can be masters of their own destiny through voting in NSW elections. Unless, it is to be a seventh state.
The people of Australia created a federal territory to contain a national capital and through their national parliament gave the people of the ACT limited self-government subject to the requirements of the national capital.
It has to be a shared approach. The ACT Government can graze on the land, but the national government must have permanent access to the timeless sacred sites and be able to prevent any homestead building, ecotourism or anything else that is inimical to the sacred sites and their surrounds or the access routes to them.
The ACT has complained about duplication and delay.
As a general principle there is no duplication or delay if projects comply with the national capital plan — a plan approved by the federal parliament. Those that do not comply with the plan require a variation to the plan which involves duplication and delay. And so they should.
It is precisely these projects that step outside the norm that should be considered in detail by second sets of eyes.
The magistrates court is a good example. The territory’s six-storey solution was met with federal objection. The NCA proposed a variation to the plan. But that has to have federal parliamentary scrutiny. The parliamentary committee opposed it. The minister could have approved it, but the ministerial approval is subject to veto by either House. Ultimately, a four-storey court was built. The delay was costly, but that was a risk the territory took in putting up a proposal contrary to the plan.
The plans for a vineyard at the racecourse will run into the same difficulty. It is not rural land and offends the plan. Ultimately the federal parliament may not like it. Similarly, with the proposal for a rural-residential development near Hall on what is buffer and rural land.
When you look at these proposals most of them are like the last two — unusual arrangements for chosen favourites, not planned changes to land use to be put to open tender. That is one of the reasons why Carnell and Kelly before her have not liked federal planning fetters. Not because federal fetters are inimical to the public good, but because they interfere with the streamlining of single-developer proposals — the very proposals that need double scrutiny and delay.
One could have more faith in territory proposals if the territory actually had a planning authority as required by the federal ACT (Planning and Land Management) Act. But it has no independent planning authority. Even Labor’s nominal one-man authority is now gone.
And the NCA would have more credibility if it didn’t do dumb things like change its name (leaving out “”planning”) contrary to an Act of Parliament. It would also attract more public confidence if it had the guts to open authority meetings to the public (as in Washington).
That could then be held up as a example for a joint planning body.
Unlike Washington and Ottawa, Canberra was blessed with a virgin site on acquired land. There has been little need, as in those cities, to deal with private land-holders and state and provincial governments. It would be folly for the federal to relinquish the wherewithal to maintain a national capital with standards of literally word’s best practice now.
In Ottawa and Washington, the national government often has to cap in hand to a provincial, private or local entity to prevent or change land use that might detract from the national element of the city. Should the territory government be allowed to approve 45-storeys in Civic; power-boats on the lake; floating islands; housing on the hilltops for toffs seeking views and so on? No; Canberra is the national capital. Its people’s aspiration to self-governing must always be tempered by that fact.