Lift the barr on planning
ACT Greens MLA Deb Foskey will move today, in the Legislative Assembly, to disallow the Planning Regulations of the ACT’s new Planning and Development Act.
“The whole ACT planning system has been reconstructed over the past few years, and the Regulations being debated today are the final piece to fall into place” Dr Foskey said today.
“The result is less commitment to working with Canberra people themselves in planning the city that they would like to live in, and less guarantee of well designed energy efficient buildings, environmentally friendly building materials and street plans.”
“In a world that needs to see continual improvement in design, it is most disappointing that these regulations don’t contain the fine tuning necessary to send the appropriate market signals to the development industry.”
“Nor do they make it easy for government to build in extra consultation as community interest and capacity builds.”
“In other words, there is no easy way under this new regime to lift the bar on planning for transport, suburbs and buildings.”
“Minister Barr’s new planning system encourages lowest common denominator practices which would have no trouble getting under a limbo bar when it should be raising the bar to encourage developers, builders and architects to aim high.”
“This debate in the Assembly will provide a signpost to improvements to the planning regime the Greens will pursue when hopefully we recover our balance of power responsibilities at the next election” Dr Foskey said.
