Builders and real estate agents have offered to buy the vacant blocks of quite a few bushfire victims.
Whether it is market forces at work or profiteering at others’ misfortune is perhaps immaterial. The question for the victims is whether to sell or rebuild, and if to rebuild whether to rebuild as it was before or to make significant changes.
Sadly, one of the most significant factors to be considered should be an unnecessary one. That factor is the question of whether the phalanx of bureaucrats, special committees, community groups and advisers is going to be so cumbersome that the rebuilding process will become a nightmare of cost and delay.
It seems to be shaping up that way. As Professor C. Northcote Parkinson so eloquently explained it in his book Parkinson’s Law, taxpayers have “assumed that a rising total in the number of civil servants must reflect a growing volume of work to be done. The fact is that the number of the officials and the quantity of the work are not related to each other at all. The rise in the total of those employed would be much the same whether the volume of the work were to increase, diminish, or even disappear. An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals and officials make work for each other.”
Yes; it would be nice to think the very best built form can rise from the ashes. So we should be making it easier for that to happen and in any event it should not be at the cost of allowing people to get on with their lives.
But the bureaucracy will protect its own. Over the years it has built a hugely costly and time-consuming system of approvals for building while around us we see ever more worse houses being built, while those with innovative ideas that will improve the quality of living get blocked at every turn because bureaucracies hate dealing with new and different things.
In the case of the fires, the building bureaucracy does not seem to be budging. Planning Minister Simon Corbell announced that he was going to cut red tape for those burnt out. But his measures go in the wrong direction. He has dropped the requirement for development approval if you want to rebuild in substantially the same way with only minor modifications. But if you want to make significant changes to the building footprint you will need a development application, which will take time and money. So there is an incentive not to improve the built form, because it is difficult to improve orientation without changing the building footprint. Moreover, there will inevitably be disputes about what is substantially the same.
So those burnt out who want to take the opportunity to improve their dwelling will have to go through the development-application process and the new High Quality Sustainable Design process. That process has laudable aims, but so easily becomes a box-ticking exercise for draftspeople. It becomes regulatory – the antithesis of innovation.
Corbell has commendably agreed to drop development-application fees of upwards of $2000 for those burnt out. But that just makes you wonder why the fee had to be so high in the first place.
We should reduce regulation and costs and increase education and information.
Incidentally, a letter writer this week condemned me for proposing in last week’s column for proposing tighter building regulation. I must not have explained myself clearly enough. Last week’s column did not mention the word “regulation’’, or “rules”, “compulsion” or “coercion’’. Rather it was a plea for information and education.
People rebuilding do not want to be mucked about by regulation, but they do need information and education. Most would never have engaged a builder or architect to build a house before and would have little idea of the traps in building contracts. Many would have little knowledge of the huge advances in materials technology, energy saving ideas and fire control since those suburbs were first built 20 to 35 years ago.
But there was one aspect of the original creation of those suburbs that worked well. Individuals bought individual blocks of land and engaged builders and sometimes architects to get on with it. The lease conditions were that you had to begin building within six months and finish in a year. Nearly all complied.
Nearly all who had houses destroyed on January 18 would most likely love to meet that timetable, but I doubt whether the new bushfire bureaucracy will allow it to happen. It is the nature of bureaucracy to emphasise and exaggerate what a massive task something is and what a huge job bureaucrats will have to do to achieve it. A 16-member Community and Expert Reference Group has been appointed to advise the Bushfire Recovery Taskforce. Special taskforces have been set up within the ACT building and planning bureaucracy. You can bet they will add cost and delay and there will be very little to show for it.
The self-interest groups are already starting. “How can we help the bushfire victims?” can soon become “How can we help ourselves?’’.
Developers are offering to buy blocks knowing the sites will be cleared free, ready to amalgamate blocks or build higher density for greater return.
Builders are suggesting that if fire victims get any fast-tracking of development applications it would be unfair to deny the same for people elsewhere. They are arguing that the fires should be a catalyst to reform the whole planning system to make it easier to build what you like wherever you want.
Vested interests are seeking to make another meal of asbestos removal as they did in the 1980s and 1990s.
The bureaucrats are engaging in make-work programs.
We obviously need some better bushfire-protection advice, but we should allow the landholders to get on with rebuilding. Some of them will seize the opportunity to build smarter and better and look at the things in places like solarhouseday.com and at Archicentre. Others will not. But the price of forcing them is likely to be too high in social and psychological costs arising from delaying the process of rebuilding their homes, routines and lives.
Maybe taskforce head Sandy Hollway with his 80 per cent philosophy will get a speedy recovery. He says that if he is 80 per cent sure a decision is right he will go with it. Let’s hope, but it defies the very prescient Parkinson’s Law.
We should ask, Do we need a taskforce and reference group at all? The great majority of those burnt out have insurance money, jobs and resources to rebuild their patch and would feel much better if they started the task immediately.
But if that is not to happen, the offers to buy their vacant blocks must be sorely tempting – indeed probably the smart move for those who do not have special ties to the area. They can start again by buying a place they can see. The challenge of selling a vacant block might be small compared to facing a building contract and new layers of special rules. And those developers who imagine they are on the smart money by investing in the vacant land might – pardon me – get their fingers burnt if reconstruction bogs down in bureaucracy.