Page 1536 - Week 05 - Thursday, 1 June 2023
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
In aiding our governments strong focus on building the infrastructure that our city needs, the new planning bill provides powers to declare territory priority projects. This is similar, albeit a more constrained version, of the same pathway that state governments have in other jurisdictions to deliver state significant projects which are important to the entire territory and are not put at risk by localised interests.
These projects would encompass future infrastructure facilities that would bring broad benefits to the residents of the territory, such as light rail, an expansion of the city-wide light rail network or, indeed, a new northside hospital.
This new provision aims to streamline determination processes by enabling efficient decision-making while still ensuring appropriate public consultation. This is a good approach that ensures that, as we get on with the job of building the critical infrastructure our city needs, we can do so across health, education, transport, housing and other critical areas.
These planning reforms also place greater emphasis on strategic and spatial planning to plan how the city’s growth should be managed and identifying land for urban development while protecting areas of environmental value. This includes the implementation of district strategies which focus on longer-term planning objectives and outcomes for each of Canberra’s districts.
This forward focus planning approach is consistent with the strategic policy goals that the government has been developing for some time around transport. This approach assists the community, and Transport Canberra and City Services, in forecasting future infrastructure needs of the city, including where new transport corridors, roads, recreation spaces and shopping precincts will be located. It also helps to identify where existing infrastructure will need to be prioritised for upgrade to complement and support the growth in population that we are seeing.
These strategies are linked to the TCCS Multimodal Network Plan, which is under development. The Multimodal Network Plan will ensure integration of transport planning with land use planning and will provide a transport response to the district strategies and apply a vision and validate approach to planning the future transport network.
This approach will involve confirming strategic objectives and modal priorities for the road network using the movement and place frameworks, which are also of course in our planning strategy. This multimodal transport planning will provide a coordinated and strategic approach in how we respond to our city’s growth.
It is important that in our planning system we carefully consider the transport needs of the community and, between the work underway in TCCS and this piece of reform to the planning system, we are making more strategic longer-term decisions about our city’s future.
I acknowledge that there has been a lot of public interest and commentary on these proposed reforms. The government has listened to feedback on the bill, as well as understanding the views of the broader community about what is important for the way that our city is planned in the future.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video