Page 982 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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The Greens have been trying to get the problems with the planning system fixed for a long time. We have put forward legislation, moved motions, made submissions, supported community groups and exerted pressure behind the scenes, but action has been very slow.
I did have very high hopes that in this term of the Assembly we would see major progress on addressing some of these problems. I am afraid that has not been the case. There have been a few good developments, like Minister Rattenbury’s living infrastructure plan, and, hopefully soon, the stopping of mandatory connection of gas to all new developments. But action has remained frustratingly slow, and the term is almost over. Action cannot wait forever, so today I have put forward a part of the solution. My bill will introduce 12 simple, practical changes to reduce the climate change and environmental impacts of development, help residents impacted by development processes to have their say and be heard, and improve the quality of development.
All three parties in this Assembly have publicly committed to action on climate change. The government has taken strong action on this, most recently with my Greens colleague Minister Rattenbury, as the climate change minister, setting excellent policies and targets for climate change to guide government actions. But there are still gaps across government when it comes to the implementation of these policies, and one of the biggest gaps is in the planning system.
The government needs to make individual decisions and individual policies, and take individual actions across the different portfolios that are all consistent with the stated goal of zero emissions by 2045. Looking at the planning system, at buildings and other things that are approved today, they will often last—usually, in fact, you would want them to last—for at least 50 to 80 years, which is well beyond the 2045 target, which is only 25 years away. Every building approved now needs to function in the zero net emissions future, but very few of them are being designed with that in mind.
Currently, the planning system does not even require this. In fact, the planning system, unbelievably, does not address greenhouse gas emissions at all. There is no mention of emissions in the Planning and Development Act. There is very little mention of it in the documents that sit under it—most importantly, the Territory Plan. The planning system is largely blind to emissions.
My bill will fix that gap somewhat. Firstly, the ACT’s legislated emissions targets will be added to the matters that have to be considered when merit and impact track developments are being assessed. Secondly, greenhouse gas emissions will be added as a trigger for an environmental impact statement, or EIS, so that high emitting development proposals get the scrutiny required to understand how compatible or incompatible they are with net zero emissions by 2045. The greenhouse gas trigger in my bill is premised on the carbon budget for the ACT; that is, the amount of carbon we can emit as a jurisdiction to stay on track for our climate change goals.
I want to make it clear that this will not have any impact on any single residential building—firstly, because those buildings simply are not big enough to trigger this
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