The Labor Party appears to have had a change of heart on land development. There must be an election soon. Labor MLA Simon Corbell said this week that if Labor won government it would restore the responsibility for land development to the public sector.
Land development was originally privatised by the federal government just before self-government. Labor had plenty of chances to privatise it while in government, but did not do so. Labor’s Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, said he was in favour of public control of land development, but never managed it.
Irrespective of the ephemeral nature of Labor’s position, there is some merit in changing the present system. Gungahlin is a testament to some of the worst aspects of private-sector land development. Block sizes are much smaller than other parts of Canberra; roads are narrower; and infrastructure has lagged well behind residential development if it is done at all.
Mr Corbell tells us he is witnessing this first-hand. Footpaths, playgrounds and landscaping lags behind.
Of course, the halcyon days of federal largesse in Canberra are over, but that should not mean that we must accept poor-quality development. There is nothing wrong with higher-density living, if the demand is there. The trouble with Gungahlin is that high-density living has been created while masquerading as traditional suburban detached living. Block sizes have shrunk, but the buildings on them has not been designed for the tighter spaces. Spec builders and block-owners have been allowed to build dwellings on the shrunk blocks as if they were on larger blocks. The key to successful and efficient medium-density, on the other hand, has been to integrate the design and building of a batch of dwellings so that noise, light, aspect and orientation elements can be worked out in a complementary way.
The trouble with surrendering too much to the private sector is that each developer and real estate is chasing a buck now, with little eye on the future.
But going too much the other way also has dangers. Planning Minister Gary Humphries says going public would expose taxpayers to a $170 million risk and $20 million worth of up-front costs. The benefit of private-sector development has been the transfer of the risk and greater efficiency in getting the work done.
It seems that the major problem with development in Canberra in the past decade has been the failure to get the best of both world’s. The efficiency of privatisation has come at a great cost. Much of that cost could have been avoided if government and administration imposed and enforced standards on the private sector developers.
But governments have been too nervous of that. They have fallen for the line that the private sector has to be pandered to completely under the threat of taking their bat and ball home (or to another state).
It may be that the Government, or more correctly ACT taxpayers, have benefited financially in the short-term from private development. The trouble with this compartmentalised short-term view is that the long-term social costs of Gungahlin and the costs of catching up on infrastructure are not brought into the balance sheet.