Page 2923 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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We are totally unclear about what the government’s offset policy is, and how this will be applied to Molonglo. This, of course, is a lot bigger than Molonglo. Will there be any dog off-leash areas to reduce the impacts of domestic animals on the riparian zone? As I said yesterday in my speech about cat containment policy, in the TAMS speech, we are glad that the government is doing work on it but surveying human beings is no substitute for actually looking at the environmental impacts. As I understand it, residents of Bonner and Forde were aware before they moved in that the suburbs were going to be cat containment areas, and the residents have worked around this. This, as far as I know, has worked well. I hope this can be repeated in Molonglo, as it did work well.
Affordable housing is a considerable issue for Molonglo. Even for medium-income households, Molonglo blocks are expensive. The government is committed to a 20 per cent affordable housing target in Molonglo, but I do not know how they are going to achieve this. There will be a temptation to sell the blocks and sites for as much as possible but we need to balance this with meeting the needs of a full range of household types. I appreciate the LDA has to make profits for the government, while delivering policies. The challenge for the government is to deliver affordable housing at close to cost price, and deliver a range of housing types and to do it without allowing a few lucky buyers to reap windfall profits, which I understand has happened, unfortunately, in a considerable amount of the current affordable housing.
As to public housing as the most affordable housing, the Greens want to see a more concrete commitment to providing at least 10 per cent public housing in the new Molonglo suburbs. Without this, we will never hope to meet the overall goal of 10 per cent. I think everyone in the Assembly is aware that there is a serious level of unmet need for public housing and significant homelessness in the ACT. We did ask for new housing in Molonglo to be seven-star EER rated. Economically, this will be a better option than six star in the long run and environmentally, of course, it will be better. We are also concerned that given the compact blocks and no plot ratios for those blocks, being so small, we will in fact end up with very little vegetation in much of the suburbs.
Last, but not least, my concern is whether solar orientation has really been maximised in Wright. I appreciate there are difficulties with terrain but we have to get serious about it. There are areas in the world where zero emission developments have become common. LDA equivalents in other states such as in Adelaide, for instance, are already committed to these sorts of developments. In the UK, they have committed to zero emissions by 2016. This is the sort of thing we need to start working on.
Next I will move to the Yarralumla brickworks. I guess my first comment with that is the brickworks need to be conserved and protected as a heritage issue. It should not be done on the basis of some sort of trade-off with development in associated areas in Yarralumla. They are separate issues. I think it is quite appropriate to have some additional development in the area near the brickworks, between the brickworks and Government House. It is important here, as everywhere, that it is high quality sustainable design and that it is a good public realm.
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