The revision of the National Capital Plan – a process begun last April by the Abbott government at the urging of ACT Liberal senator Zed Seselja – remains a work in progress. The release of the latest draft changes on Thursday confirms, however, that the National Capital Authority's involvement in and oversight of territory land planning matters will shrink markedly. Many of those territory areas where development plans currently have to be assessed by the NCA for compliance with the principles and polices of the National Capital Plan (such as the Murrumbidgee and Molonglo river corridors, the Namadgi National Park and the Tuggeranong Valley) will become the sole purview of the ACT government.
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Planning guidelines and zones within the parliamentary triangle, a domain over which the NCA nominally exercises final authority, will be altered to allow for taller buildings in and around Anzac Parade and Parkes Way and new development around East and West blocks in Parkes. Land around State Circle in Forrest, currently designated for "community use", is to be rezoned for mixed-use development – at the request of the ACT government's Land Development Agency. The NCA will retain planning control of prominent hills, ridges and mountains in and around the city, as well as its road approaches, but its relevance to Canberra's planned urban future will be considerably diminished if the draft changes survive the final public consultation process.
In many respects, this is no bad thing: indeed, it might in fact be seen as an overdue sign of maturity in a city/state once administered exclusively by the Commonwealth but self-governing since 1989. Having an unelected body such as the NCA serving as "trustee" of the national capital certainly seems anachronistic, and no more so than to successive federal governments, which have progressively cut the agency's funding to the point where it's debatable it serves its historical purpose.
According to Senator Seselja, the old National Capital Plan represented an unnecessary extra layer of planning complexity – one that hampered the government's ability to adequately provide for the territory's growth and prosperity. He will be delighted at the prospect of change, particularly if it enables his pet project, the development of west Tuggeranong, to go ahead – and so will his supporters in the developer lobby and the ACT Property Council. The Barr government will, likewise, welcome any extra freedom to advance its planning agenda of bigger, taller buildings in the city and inner suburbs.
Individuals, planners and resident groups who consider the planning values embodied by the old NCA to be integral to the city's future amenity and identity will not be so pleased, however. They fear that substantial revisions will open the way to developments where the major (and perhaps only) consideration will be on maximising returns and where the legacies of the city's foundation planners will receive scant attention. In the sense that governments are generally held accountable for their actions, such misgivings may be overstated. Nonetheless the "sidelining" of an independent planning watchdog will be a major fork in Canberra's planning road.
