Labor’s plan to slash the National Capital Authority has ACT Ministers and officials rubbing their hands with glee. Developers are also quietly chortling.
The people of Australia and the people of Canberra, however, should be mightily concerned.
Labor plans to restrict the NCA’s role to the Parliamentary Triangle and the Australian War Memorial. It argues that a wider role would result in unnecessary duplication and that ACT authorities answerable to the ACT electorate are capable of doing the job.
But the national elements of Canberra are more than the triangle and the Australian War Memorial. These wider elements are not the property of just the people of Canberra; they are the property of all Australians. They require a national body with planning expertise answerable to the national parliament. A local body answerable to only the local Parliament and voters can easily ignore national questions to the detriment of the broader Australian community which has an interest in the national capital.
One of the best examples came on the very day that Federal Labor announced its plan to slash the NCA. The ACT Supreme Court halted work on the Gungahlin Drive Extension.
Gungahlin Drive shows the need for a national-interest perspective.
ACT Labor in Opposition promised to build the road on the western side of the Australian Institute of Sport and fairly close to it. After winning Government in 2001 it announced it would go ahead with that route and spent large sums of money on preliminary studies. It was a good local political compromise, especially for the new Planning Minister Simon Corbell who represented the seat of Molonglo which embraced both Gungahlin where people were squealing for a new road to get them to work and North Canberra where people were squealing against a road mashing through their recreation area.
But it might not have been good for the nation as a whole. The national government has spent huge sums building an institution of national excellence in sports training. A freeway running past its doors could be ruinous for it.
The national government – with the help of planning expertise from the NCA – stepped in and, in effect, overturned the politically convenient decision made by the local authorities.
Whatever one thinks of the merits of where Gungahlin Drive should go, if anywhere, Canberrans and Australians more broadly should recognise the need for a national role beyond the triangle in decisions like this.
What about those parts of the Lake Burley Griffin not in the Triangle? What if ACT authorities allowed speed boats or jet skis there? What about a few houses on the shore opposite Government House? What if ACT authorities gave priority to the other lakes for water quality, or allowed water quality to run down because it had other priorities.
What about the National Capital Open Space System? This prohibits building on the hill tops and building above the certain height contour. This is one of the most important elements of making Canberra look and feel like Canberra – like no other city on earth. It is a legacy inherited by all Australians from Burley Griffin, his plan and those who have executed it over 90 years against all sorts of transient commercial and political interests.
Residential blocks on the high ground invariably fetch higher prices. What if a cash-strapped ACT Government – keen to throw money at some short-term problem – decided to flog off a bit of land higher up Mount Ainslie, Black Mountain or Red Hill. Just one more street wouldn’t hurt, would it?
Without a national body with planning expertise to resist, a great legacy could be compromised.
It is pointless to argue that no ACT Government of either persuasion would do such things. A hundred years of federation tells one thing: that state-level politicians do not care less about the broader national interest if their political bums are on the line.
What about the Australian Defence Force Academy and its surrounds? Also the national Parliament surely has a huge interest in the road from the airport to the city and Parliament House. The northern entrance to Canberra is another matter that only the national government has the money and vision to address. This is the plan to bring the main entrance around Majura Avenue so that the first vista of Canberra for visitors by car from Sydney and Melbourne would be from the south-western tip of the Triangle.
A national planning body should retain interest over the key trunk routes. It should also retain a general watching brief over the look and feel of the whole city.
The National Capital Authority also has a role “to foster awareness of the national capital” throughout Australia. It is in its Act and is funded. It is a role that benefits all Australians. Will this go, too? ACT tourism has similar but different aims and cannot do the same job.
If the NCA loses much of its key national role, it is inevitable that people interested in the national sensitivities of the national capital will appeal elsewhere if they see local powers threatening them. They will go to the federal joint parliamentary committee responsible for the territories. But that committee has no planning expertise to draw upon. Decisions will be ad hoc and ill-informed.
There may well be room to curb duplication between the NCA and ACT authorities. It may be that the national body should be required to signal its interest earlier in roads decisions such as Gungahlin Drive. It may be the NCA should give up on detailed works approval in places like State Circle. This might save a little money. But an overall contraction of its role to little more than the Triangle would be a sad mistake. Australians would be the poorer for it.