Tuesday, 18 June 2024

City of Boroondara planning

David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (22:14): (963) My matter is for the attention of the Minister for Planning in the other place, and it concerns the government’s ill-thought-through planning announcement on the weekend and the City of Boroondara’s thoughtful response and statement to that. I urge members of the chamber to go online and read the statement by the City of Boroondara on its website. It makes a number of key points which I think the minister has misunderstood or not addressed. There is a housing crisis – there is a lack of houses – but that is the result of poor planning by Commonwealth and state governments. It is the result of 21 years of Labor out of the last 25 and of errors made by this state government. It is also a result of the high government taxes placed on new houses and indeed a result of surging immigration that has been brought into Australia without a proper settlement plan. The housing targets that were announced are without a commitment to the infrastructure required to support those. It is a very close to irresponsible approach to planning. There is a fundamental right of people to open spaces, the statement makes clear – adequate open spaces – to adequate drainage and sewerage being part of the planning and to education facilities, health facilities and proper public transport. None of these are part of the government’s announcement. There is no analysis of the need for additional infrastructure, which is part of the development of large new housing developments.

The housing targets of course themselves do not produce houses. Targets do not produce houses. Developers do, the Boroondara statement says, and that is shown very clearly by the many approvals – thousands and thousands of them – that are approved but are not being built. So there are approvals but not builds. That is a very clear point about the failure of the government to look forward and to actually put in place proper outcomes in the planning portfolio. You might even say that just having targets without the support behind them is vacuous.

I would say the state government and the Commonwealth government have roles in planning adequate housing. Community wellbeing and sustainable housing should be the focus, not politically motivated and responsibility-deflecting announcements that do not provide an actual solution. So I call on the Minister for Planning to listen to the community in Boroondara and especially to the council, to reverse her unsophisticated approach to planning – the potential fake targets that she has put in place – to meet with the council and to work with the council rather than to lecture and hector, as this government is wont to do with councils. We all want more housing. We all want greater opportunities for people, but sheer targets are not solution in themselves.