In various parts of Australia, planning issues continue to be a sticking point between Local Government and their State counterparts. Earlier this year, the New South Wales Government’s changes to its Environmental Planning and Assessment Act increased the Minister for Planning’s powers to intervene in local decision making, thereby reducing the ability of Councils and their communities to shape the future of their localities.
Speaking at the recent NSW Local Government Association conference, LGA President, Councillor Genia McCaffery, pointed to the fact that many Councils are being presented with enormous demands to house more and more people. She said these additional residents add to the current pressures on infrastructure, employment opportunities, green spaces, productive agriculture, water resources and waste disposal, with Local Government placed firmly at the centre of planning for this growth. But balancing the demand for growth with a local community’s desire to maintain its sense of place is in many areas tipping more and more in favour of cashed up developers.
Also speaking at the same conference, former Prime Minister, Paul Keating told delegates that he believes Local Government is “the only sentry at the gate” between the interests of developers and those of the wider community. With the primary motivation of massive profits, design and detail is losing out to function and material use. He said that architecture is being driven by developers not design.
Describing many of multistorey residential developments as glass and concrete birdcages, Paul Keating said that this is the result of “developers with enormous funds spreading across our landscape like rampant eczema”. Similarly, he warned that the immense power and influence of this industry sector through its political donations is robbing the rest of us of our quiet enjoyment of the environment.
Urging Local Governments to stand their ground in the name of their communities and local environs, Paul Keating said Councils must demand compliance from developers – to get heights, setbacks and materials right. He told delegates that these areas belong to all of us and you are the guardians.
Time and time again, the other spheres of government agree that Local Governments are best placed to work with their communities to decide local priorities and shape their own destinies. Yet it is in the area of planning that State Governments are most likely to throw this aside in favour of their own development agendas. Councils must stand firm and, working with their communities and other local stakeholders, continually press home the point that the same constituents who elected them will also be deciding the fate of State MPs.
