Page 1115 - Week 06 - Thursday, 27 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
raised by all sorts of people and for all sorts of reasons. I will today address some of those issues.
I believe that the front fence policy should be referred to the committee, but before doing so I will give a brief outline on that policy itself. As I have already said, the reason why the front fence policy is to be found in the plan and Burley Griffin's idea as stated in 1918 was that Canberra should be a garden city theme, but the vision of Walter Burley Griffin was restricted to his plan to make Canberra a city of only some 25,000 residents. His plan did not give consideration to the some 270,000 residents that currently live in Canberra in our sprawling suburbs.
The point I make, Mr Speaker, is that the Griffin theme of a garden city was based on plans for a city smaller than the one in which we currently live. The front fence policy which adheres to this theme, I believe, is ready for review because of this. The very problems of suburban living now question this particular policy. Following Griffin's statement, the Federal Capital Advisory Committee in the early 1920s acted upon Griffin's theme by recommending that houses have a soft enclosure and demarcation by hedges.
These recommendations were then incorporated into the Canberra building regulations in 1924 wherein front fences were prohibited. Then in 1926 the federal capital planning advisory committee referred to this approach being taken in the development of its first four residential areas. In 1958, shortly after the NCDC was established, it reaffirmed the no front fence policy. Within a year a number of specific development control policies were adopted. These control policies included the statement that front fences, including dwarf walls, will not be permitted, side fences will not be permitted in front of the building line except in special circumstances, and paling fences may be prohibited in some areas.
More recently, in 1964, the Building Ordinance was introduced. This requires development proposals to be approved with respect to external design and siting. Also in 1964 the NCDC incorporated the no front fence policy into the publication it released called Development Standards as Applied to Siting and Design Within Residential, Commercial and Industrial Areas. But the development standards were then superseded by the publication Policies and Definitions which in turn was replaced by the publication Current Design and Siting Policies in 1973.
Therefore, since Burley Griffin's statement, despite successive policy alterations, the garden city theme has been adhered to, and in accordance with this theme Canberra's planning authorities have prohibited front fences in detached or semidetached housing areas. However, the question can be asked as to whether fences made out of certain specific material would be able to maintain a high standard of appearance for Canberra suburbs. Similarly, it can be argued that front fences should be allowed up to
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .