City Hill is one of the points of the Parliamentary Triangle _ an intersection of Canberra the national city and Canberra the municipal city.
It is now also the centre of a bureaucratic and political triangle _ or more correctly quadrangle.
The sides of the quadrangle contain the ACT Government, the National Capital Planning Authority, the parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Capital and the Federal Minister responsible for Canberra, Brian Howe, also affectionately known as the Minister for Better Cities.
The Romans and the Spaniards were fond of the quadrangle as a basis for town planning. Both lost their empires, though some of their town planning ideas remain an inspiration. But perhaps the latest kerfuffle over City Hill and whether the ACT can build a six-storey magistrates court on its western flank would be best described as a plain old wrangle, rather than a quadrangle or triangle of bureaucratic contest.
First the history. The ACT needs a new court of a reasonable size. It would be cheaper next to the existing Supreme Court. That means a six-storey building on Vernon Circle. (The circle you go around going from the city to Commonwealth Avenue Bridge.) That, however, is a national area and requires Federal approval. That means a change to the national plan and involvement of the NCPA.
The NCPA since its inception five years ago has refused to deal with things the way its predecessor, the National Capital Development Commission, sometimes did: one building at a time. If there were to be a six-storey magistrates court, it required a Master Plan for the whole of City Hill.
The NCPA is required to take on board requests from the ACT and private developers for projects. It cannot, and does not, say we are not ready to develop that area now. So it rushed it plan for City Hill forward.
Basically, it said stuff the worship of the car and stuff arterial heavy traffic rushing through the centre. Let’s stop them at traffic lights on Vernon Circle. Let’s slow the traffic to a crawl. Let us have a couple of dozen buildings on Vernon Circle facing inwards to City Hill, which would become an urban park actually used by people who work across the road, not an island in the middle of a busy circular freeway.
Constitution and Edinburgh Avenues could be extended to new intersections with Vernon Circle.
The NCPA and ACT Government were at one. Unlike, say, the history of Acton Peninsula.
But when the NCPA floated this idea for public discussion, it got some heated opposition, especially among federal parliamentarians. It was sent off to the parliamentary committee, which came out last week with a firm No. It said you are not going to wreck City Hill and destroy it as a point of the Parliamentary Triangle just because the ACT wants to build a six-storey magistrates’ court. Let them build a three-storey one; it won’t cost much more.
The ACT is urging the NCPA to ignore the parliamentary committee and recommended its Master Plan to the Minister anyway.
Now when Ros Kelly was Minister, before the 1993 election, things were different. Because she was also an ACT representative, she knew the ACT bureaucrats and developers better. Because she lived in Canberra, spending as much time in her electorate as her ministerial duties permitted, there were more opportunities for them to express their views.
Now Brian Howe is Minister, things are likely to be different. The ACT is likely to get a less sympathetic ear for its pet projects. The national element will take precedence.
Much as the NCPA likes the six-storey option (in rare concurrence with the ACT), there is no way the NCPA will put a recommendation to the Minister to ignore the committee and accept its Master Plan for City Hill, including the ACT’s magistrates’ court.
The NCPA has now got a Minister more to its liking, so it is not going to embarrass him by pitting him against his federal parliamentary colleagues. It would not like to see him having to argue a case against a coalition of Democrats and Liberals (headed by the deputy chair of the committee, Margaret Reid, who carries considerable clout in her quiet way with her Senate colleagues).
But the NCPA still has the ACT breathing down its neck for a new magistrates’ court.
It may be the Federal Government is willing to provide to extra money so a comparable three-storey building can be built. But that is unlikely to be a solution. The NCPA still likes its grand plan for City Hill. There is no guarantee that it will agree to a three-storey building which would in effect wreck it for at least 30 years, because a key site would be taken up with a mere squat building. The committee’s finding, however, from the NCPA’s perspective can be seen as a mere half-decade setback.
Bear in mind the Minister has no power to activate plans; he or she can only approve or overrule NCPA plans. Under the legislation, therefore, the NCPA has considerable power.
So we have an impasse, or a quadrangle of opposing views. The ACT needs NCPA approval for any building on national land (such as City Hill). The NCPA wants the magistrates’ court as an appropriate civic building on Vernon Circle, but it wants it as a six-storey building to kick off its grand plan. But the NCPA plans have to get ministerial approval. And the Minister will not (or politically cannot) give approval if the Parliament or parliamentary committee opposes the plan.
That makes for a very powerful committee. The chair of it, Bob Chynoweth, said the ACT Government might not like its recommendations, but the people of Canberra would. He citied the evidence many Canberra people gave to the committee as support for his view, as well as his own straw polls. Indeed, many people in Canberra have looked to Federal authorities to save them in the past from the what they see as the excesses of local ambition.
In all, last week’s exercise shows that planning disputes over the national areas in Canberra can no longer be seen as purely Federal vs ACT. In this case it could be seen a body of Canberra people and the Federal parliamentary committee versus ACT authorities and the Federal planning bureaucracy.
The lesson is that the NCPA and the ACT Government will have to do a lot more to convince people that a new city centre based on large buildings around City Hill is a Good Thing for Canberra, but perhaps they may never be able to do that.