Crispin Hull

The Minister for Planning, Bill Wood, rejected yesterday a call to re-open tenders for three new trunk-route service stations. The call came from the Canberra Property Owners Association who asserted in a letter to Mr Wood with copies to other Assembly members that the tender process was flawed and that a recent Trade Practices action required that the tenders be reopened.

Association secretary Styliani Contis said two of the tender requirements were inconsistent. One required the applicant to be “independent”. On the other hand, another required continuity of supply. The only way to secure continuity of supply was to make an arrangement with one of only five suppliers or fuel in Australia, which would inevitably contrary to the independence requirement.

The applicant was also required to act competitively and remain competitive. But the central control by the major oil companies made these requirements impossible to monitor.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_petrol”

The party is over before it began for Australians Against Further Immigration _ at least in the ACT. The party did not got the requisite 100 members in the ACT to be registered in time for February’s election and the name will not appear on the ballot paper.

Yesterday was the last day it could submit an application in order to get its name on the ballot paper.

The anti-immigration party has polled around 8 per cent in some by-elections recently which in the Act context would have put it in the running for a seat. Now it will have to rely on its own advertising to associate its candidates with the name.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_parties”

The ACT Government lost up to $15 million by allowing the private sector to develop the Gungahlin suburb of Palmerston, according to three academics who won a planning award for their work last night.

The academics say that, alternatively, the Government could have cut the cost of land by about $9000 a block.

The academics agree with the ACT Government’s position of taking a greater role in greenfields development by moving from privatisation to more joint ventures. But they say the Government could take the whole thing over.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_neutze1”

Paul Keating’s dipping of his toes into the waters of town planning earlier this year has now resulted in him getting a thorough bucketing. He thought the Cahill Expressway should be knocked down on aesthetic grounds because it cut the city from the harbour _ in much the same way as Parkes Way cuts the city from the lake in Canberra.

On the expressway, Keating was talking about how a grubby transport route was messing up the ambiance of the city and the lifestyle of its residents. Now, of course, a different major transport route approved by his government (the third runway) has wrecked the lifestyle of 100,000 residents _ town planning at its worst.

The episodes illustrate the very political nature of town planning _ which goes back some centuries, or indeed, millennium.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_ncpamag”

The National Capital Planning Authority has a new chair _ Professor Evan Walker. The appointment was announced yesterday by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Housing and Regional Development, Brian Howe. Professor Walker is Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Melbourne and was a Minister in the Victorian Government from 1982 to 1990.

He takes up the role immediately.

The appointment comes at a critical time for the organisation which has several major matters on its plate:

First, a recommendation last month by the Federal Government Urban Design Task Force that the Federal Government take a greater role in the renewal and development of Australian cities and that expertise for that role be provided by a greater role for the NCPA.
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For a long time New Zealand appeared to be substantially ahead and better than Australia at dealing with those occupying the land before European settlement. That changed last week with the offer by the New Zealand Government to settle all outstanding Maori claims for $NZ1 billion ($A825 million). The offer contained a fundamental inconsistency.

The New Zealand Minister for Justice, Doug Graham, said on one hand that the Government wanted a “”full and final” and “”honourable” settlement. On the other hand, he said it was a “”take-it-or-leave-it” package.

But surelu, a settlement can hardly be honourable if it is not negotiated and genuinely consented to by both sides. A settlement can hardly be “”full” if one side has pre-determined its upper limit.

Until the Mabo case in 1992, Australia’s treatment of prior occupiers’ land claims was way behind New Zealand. Very simply, despite the overwhelming moral and legal force of the 1967 referendum result, successive federal Governments did nothing to deal with Aboriginal claims for land rights, with the exception of the Fraser Government’s grant of land rights in the Northern Territory.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_maori”

Welcome aboard. There is no stopping light rail for Canberra now. The feasibility study by Booz-Allen and Hamilton issued during the week predictably enough said light rail is a goer for Canberra and we should move on to engineering, environmental and detailed costing study.

It fits a pattern of feasibility studies. Yes it is feasible. Let’s have some more studies.

The Government that runs a bus service propped up by a huge subsidy will move headlong into a $400 million light-rail and commit rate-payers’ money for 20 years. It will be the lowest population city in the world to have such a system.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_light”

Independent MLA Michael Moore accused the Government yesterday of underplaying a detailed report which he said had come out against light rail.

He wants the $500,000 extra study on light rail delayed pending an Assembly committee study of the detailed six-volume report. He said the Government had prevented people making an informed judgment about light rail by underplaying the DJA Maunsell and Partners report and making much public noise about reports which favoured light rail.

Mr Moore wrote to the Minister for Urban Services, David Lamont, yesterday asking that the DJA Maunsell and Partners report be made more publicly accessible and that it be more carefully considered before $500,000 were committed to studying the next step.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_light30”

The ACT Government will face some critical transport decisions in the next few years. Some will be pressing and localised. Some with be of a broader nature. This week the Government issued the Public Transport Options Study _ Stage 3 which concluded that a light-rail system is feasible for Canberra and that the Territory should move to the next stage _ engineering, environmental and detailed costing studies. The Government has made a lot of approving noises about light rail, and perhaps is not showing the degree of detactment and scepticism that it should for such a huge project. Several state-level governments (and their long suffering tax-payers) have had their fingers badly burned by public debt run up by public transport.

It may well be that light rail offers some solutions to Canberra’s public transport needs, but a Government would have to be very confident before it started to sink $400 million of taxpayers money into it.

The Government is clearly right to be looking at transport options and is right to be looking in detail at public-transport solutions. Canberra does suffer somewhat from the blight of car parks and over-reliance on the car. But it should not jump easily from that step to say that light rail is the answer to its prayers. It has many things going against it. It requires large capital costs to start; unlike buses its route is fixed; it can only serve the main trunk routes; it will take much of its clientele from existing bus customers. In the Canberra context it would be a bold experiment indeed. No other city of this size has tried it and others of larger populations have tried light rail and found it an expensive option.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_leader23dec”

There is a simplicity about Charles Bean’s view of the Australian War Memorial. Bean, the official historian of Australia’s role in World War I, spent several months immediately after the war collecting artefacts for the memorial.

“”The conception of that memorial is that is should impress the visitor with the feeling: here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made,” he wrote.

The memorial is now in a state of transition. There is a danger the memorial role, expressed by Bean, could be eroded. Certainly the RSL sees that danger.
Continue reading “1994_12_december_kelson”