Page 716 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 2010
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The government’s ACTPLAn initiative has delivered a range of procedural, cultural and structural improvements. ACTPLAn is an action plan supported by industry to ensure that ACTPLA, the Department of Territory and Municipal Services and the building industry work more closely together to support thousands of building jobs in the ACT.
As I have said before in this place, climate change means Canberra changes. And our ideas for planning respond to this. The ACT government is planning for climate change. The government’s intent is to drive change to planning policy through the sustainable future program in support of the government’s climate change strategy, weathering the change. This will drive changes to regulation and design standards in the territory plan, including those relating to solar orientation and solar access.
The government’s intent is to develop and implement statutory arrangements for protecting solar rights. We intend to consult industry to alter the current solar access rules in the territory plan to ensure better tools for measuring energy gain. And we intend to strengthen the rules around passive solar orientation of stand-alone blocks in new subdivisions.
We intend to evaluate and review the Canberra spatial plan to ensure that it is responsive to and can deliver on the key principles that are contained within it. We intend to work with the community and industry to implement, over the next decade, carbon targets for entire estates.
We intend to implement more comprehensive measures to increase residential density in and around town and group centres and along transport corridors. We intend to develop world’s best practice sustainable development demonstration projects such as the East Lake development. We propose to further enhance stormwater harvesting in new estates, establish new approaches to water re-use in the Molonglo Valley development and continue to drive energy efficiencies in new and existing homes by phasing out electric storage hot-water heaters for class 1 and 2 buildings, consistent with the COAG national strategy on energy efficiency.
As Canberra’s population grows and the demand for new and affordable housing increases, the government will continue to plan new suburbs in accordance with the Canberra spatial plan. At the same time, the government’s aim is to meet the goal of the Canberra spatial plan to achieve 50 per cent of all new development by 2030 within 7½ kilometres of the city centre. Building on the work already undertaken in areas such as Woden, Belconnen, Gungahlin and Braddon, we will investigate ways of preparing our town centres and group centres for the future. To quote from the statement:
Perhaps the most difficult element of any development assessment system is balancing the rights of the community with the rights of the individual.
The planning system has to balance these competing rights through the consultation process, the notification process and, to a lesser extent, in the appeals process.
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