Architect Tony Trobe ("City vision hijacked by details", Sunday Canberra Times, June 21, p25) calls for a radical simplification of the ACT's Territory Plan and multiple associated planning codes, to "make Canberra the most liveable city in the world within 20 years". Hear, hear!
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He then asks: "Why not?"
The answer is partly in the adjoining column ("Time to tweak planning rules") from Neil Evans of the ACT Housing Industry Association. The HIA and the Property Council increasingly urge government to snuff out third-party rights to appeal development proposals. They prefer to deal exclusively with government officials.
This reflects the other reason that Tony Trobe's call cannot be realised. Federal politicians set up the ACT to depend on one-off, non-renewable land sales, and other development-related taxes, to meet the ongoing costs of a city that only exists to provide a national capital for Australia.
The ACT government has a fundamental conflict of interest between maximising short-term revenue from property development and applying respectable planning principles. The Land Development Agency and the ACT Planning and Land Authority are in the same directorate. The Territory Plan sets up conflicting criteria that neuter decision-makers. Only volunteer resident groups and third-party voices can be relied upon to hold developers to account. Only the federal government can unscramble this omelette, but it shows no appetite to do so.
Richard Thwaites, Deakin
Strategic sophism
My thanks to my old journalistic colleague Robin Poke (Letters, June 21) for joining Pedant's Corner on the misuse of words – his example was "issues".
The list is endless but I would like to add "strategy" (usually plural in this modern world where women, unlike we men, are able to undertake more than one task at a time). Thus we never have plans any more, they are always strategies.
Sadly, unlike Robin and me, too many journalists have fallen into the trap of ignoring (or not even knowing about) George Orwell's six-point advice for good writing, which may be summed up as, "use the best, simple words that tell the reader something worthwhile and to the point".
I blame Sir Humphrey Appleby for today's pandemic of verbal diarrhoea. His writers must have realised that the brilliant obfuscations they put in his mouth would spread like wildfire through the public sectors of the Western world and, indeed, into much of the private sector and even the media. In no time, the satire became the reality.
Thus, today, we are likely to write something like, "We propose the facilitation of a strategic narrative considered capable of circumventing the worst case scenario and producing a positive outcome for the key stakeholders going forward".
I'll think of a suitable prize for the person who provides the best simplification.
Eric Hunter, Cook
School of light rail
Draft Environmental Statement framers conceivably display a degree of levity in suggesting Canberrans will need schooling "to interact with the light rail" (Canberrans 'will need light rail safety lessons', Sunday CT, June 21, p3).
Temporal attitudes laud individualism. Red-tape is to be abolished. Regulations are to be emasculated or eliminated. The "nanny state" is widely discredited and regarded as anachronistic, except, that is, when it provides hand-outs!
Experience the challenge! Would framers of the Environmental Statement suggest that Canberrans undergo re-education courses to assist in dealing with the new urban hazard, and until deemed proficient in the art of dodging speeding trams, wear "L" plates?
Tram-awareness courses could provide a new growth industry: how to buy tickets, enter and exit trams, avoid jamming high heels in track joints, seating etiquette.
Lest education fail, some may wish to extend personal injury insurance to cover being struck by trams! Tram offshoot business opportunities seem only limited by imagination.
Albert M.White, Queanbeyan
Ian Warden and the groovier-than-thou brigade (see Marion Lieba, Letters, June 21, p18) like to lump the Gungahlin tram in with the arboretum and public art as examples of imaginative planning.
They say you can decide the worth of the complex project on first principles, based on what kind of person you are: an optimistic, positive arboretum/art lover or a penny-pinching, naysaying, change-fearer.
I like the public art and supported it. But arboretum/art ideas cost less than 10percent of the tram folly.
To get some Gungahlians down Northbourne in a slightly groovier way will, using historical Canberra cost-escalation, see we ratepayers (how much did yours rise recently?) replant our entry-road with little sticks and service a loan of $1billion-plus indefinitely. Lunacy.
Michael Jordan, Gowrie
Paul Bowler (Letters, June 21) has written a sad letter. He attempts to counter the observation made by Ian Warden (June 14) on the negativity of some Canberrans with a personal attack. However, he does point out the reason why there are opponents to light rail. The opponents simplify the light rail investment by saying it is only being built to solve a rush-hour traffic problem.
Paul, and other opponents of light rail, solving rush-hour traffic is only one of the reasons for constructing light rail.
Other reasons are that it helps make ACTION buses viable, it increases the land utilisation and hence value along the route, it makes the Gungahlin Town Centre a realistic alternative for office accommodation to Civic, it enables better use of the Epic area, and it is an important part of revitalising all the town centres through a whole-of-Canberra integrated transport system.
The opponents of light rail, concerned about cost, would be better occupied thinking positively and start asking to be given an opportunity to invest in light rail. The government can fund the construction so that everyone in the ACT can benefit from the increase in value of the land along the route. Extending the system to Tuggeranong and other town centres would revitalise them. Funded appropriately, we can all share in the increase in value this will bring.
Kevin Cox, Ngunnawal
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