Angela Shanahan's strange whinge

I agree with much of what Ryoma says, but I am not sure we will even have to wait for the supply of sellable land to run out before things start getting interesting. A more immediate challenge is likely to be a continued squeeze (even if not the feared slashing) of federal government spending in Canberra, regardless of the outcome of this year’s election – with a consequent downturn in ACT Government revenues, particularly from property.

In these circumstances, a plan to replace, over time, property transaction taxes with annual property taxes is unlikely to be a viable solution without serious and sustained attention to the spending side of the ledger, and with many unpalatable decisions needing to be made.

Thank for the tip to get access to the article JB!
I have to say that while I have rarely agreed with Ms Shanahan’s views in the past, she has totally captured how many Canberrans feel about the sad decline in liveability in our beloved city, mainly due to wasteful, useless govt. This issue hit me in the face when I returned in 1999 (after over 15 years in Syd/C Coast), and the decline has accelerated significantly since then. Such a pity. Thank goodness someone has called the ‘vibrant city’ rubbish we continually hear from ACT Govt, for what it truly is.
FWIW, I don’t mind some high rises, and like a good coffee. However, Australians have long had a love affair with suburbia – it’s deep in our collective psyche, as can be seen from the info below:

‘European Australia was born urban and soon became suburban’ . . . ‘Governor Arthur Phillip ordered that the streets be laid out widely ‘to promote the circulation of air, and that blocks be no more than 150 x 50 ft with no more than one house on each allotment’ [the quarter acre block]. He was most anxious to ‘avoid recreating the urban horrors of the Old World in the New’. The Old World was based on high density life (considered ‘dense, dirty, unnatural, disorderly and disease-ridden’ – ie, slums). In Australia, suburbs soon became democratic (as opposed to exclusive precincts for the rich to avoid contact with the poor in the urban slums), and ‘the suburban home was the realisation of many working class immigrants’ dreams’. [ from ‘Suburbs’ by Graeme Davison, published in Sociology – Place, Time and Division, OUP 2006]

Canberra was built to be the epitome of democratic suburbia. As someone who grew up here from the age of 6, it was wonderful, and it is incredibly sad to let that dream (which, I believe, was actually realised in the 70s and 80s) turn into a nightmare due to ongoing poor planning and govt mismanagement.

Just read the article, and apart from the usual banalities (Canberra doesn’t have a beach – really!), I think what Ms Shanahan is trying to warn about is two things;

1) That the ACT is living beyond its means, and given how heavily the ACT Government relies upon land sales to keep the revenue side of its budget flush, I too wonder what happens when they run out of (stable, non-reserved for other uses) land to build upon.

In a decade or so, our facilities (which as Ms Shanahan correctly points out are used by people well beyond Canberra) are going to be even more stretched by the aging population.

2) Ms Shanahan also points out the incredibly ugly nature of many of the new apartment complexes. Despite some movement around energy efficiency, and an understandable move towards higher density, many of these complexes are still built upon the “pack-them-in” mentality of property developers, rather than fewer apartments being built in a manner in tune with their surroundings, and with high quality materials.

There is an awful lot of absolute garbage being built. To be fair, I am not sure how much of this is;
a) a lack of understanding by our local building firms about how to build anything with any level of architectural or design flair that doesn’t look like shoeboxes en masse.
b) something forced upon our builders either by planning laws which are either horrendously prescriptive, or basically open slather (I predict the latter).
c) economic pressures such as skills and credit shortages meaning that the construction attitude is to knock stuff up as quickly as possible, in order to find the next job and keep a pipeline of work coming through…

Where I disagree with the article is Ms Shanahan’s assumption that apartments are bad per se, as eloquently put by arescarti 42 in post #2. I live in an apartment now that faces north, has a small courtyard, and is generally well-located, and is low-maintenance. It suits Mrs Ryoma and I really well at this point in our lives.

But my point above about bad construction is still valid; the last place we lived in faced east, and was so cold that it was often warmer to be outside, even in winter, than it was to be inside. Naturally the power bills were enormous as a result, and we’d done everything we could (put curtains up, wore warmer clothing, etc) to try to limit our use of the heater.

What happens to this city when our housing market collapses in future will be instructive. How many of these apartments (like the horrible one I’ve just described) will be (deservedly) knocked down? Ditto for the mainly atrociously built houses put up between the end of WW2 and around 2000? And when this happens, are we going to have the sense to actually build some better housing in their places?

Then there’s the actual economic side. How many of these dogboxes function as the retirement plan for Canberran Baby Boomers – and what happens to them when the rent on these places stops flowing? I can see further pressure on both the ACT and Federal governments as a result.

Perhaps one of the changes needed is for builders and planners to actually liaise with neighbours before anything gets built. It’s not good enough for many NIMBYs on one hand to say “no development in “wherever” ” (Deakin seems to be the latest place where this attitude has broken out) but on the other hand it’s a bit rough to have an ugly monstrosity plonked down next to you without any warning.

And by liaise, I mean actually sit down and talk through the fact that a place will be zoned as having apartments, and that’s the economic imperative, but rather than snarling at each other, to talk through what improvements could be made to the design of such apartments to lesson their impact, and to actually improve the streetscape?

Ewa Kretowicz, ha, article is just wrong. Stark’s comments are correct, and he never actually says it’s an ACT Government resource. In between his actual quotes, Ewa has written total garbage that is sloppy fiction.

Camile (and another aircrane called Malcolm) were brought from the US to NSW, under a funding agreement that splits the cost between NSW and the Commonwealth. Others like the famous Elvis were brought to other states like Victoria under similar agreements.

Their main base is Bankstown, however the intention was always to move them to forward operating areas depending on the greatest need within the state. Camile has therefore been sent to the SE region due to the fires, and as Hume is already set up for maintaining choppers, that’s where it’s parking.

I read about it back in November, and the ACT RFS also noted this recently when explaining why it was in Canberra. You can see the full details here: http://www.rfs.nsw.gov.au/dsp_more_info.cfm?CON_ID=18961&CAT_ID=1327

For anyone who is interested, the article I quoted is here:

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/orange-angel-flies-in-fire-relief-20130112-2cn1a.html

The pertinent paragraphs are these:

“Camille is in the ACT for the bushfire season as part of a 2003 agreement between all Australian states and territories to co-ordinate bushfire combat under the National Aerial Firefighting Centre.

Chief officer of the ACT Rural Fire Service Andrew Stark said the ACT government could not afford to borrow the helicopter from the US without federal funding.

”$14 million of Commonwealth money helps to fund this resource and, on a day like today, we move them to where the highest risk is – so it’s great to have a resource like this here standing by in Canberra,” Mr Stark said.”

In light of the well-informed comments from Creative Canberran, I assume Mr Stark was mis-quoted, or taken out of context, or perhaps it’s just another example of the contortions and shadow plays necessitated by vertical fiscal imbalance. Whatever the case, it’s endlessly fascinating – and sometimes comforting – for us humble voters and taxpayers.

farq said :

> “There are now 22,000 ACT public servants, to service a population of 380,000. Something is not right about this.”

Is this accurate? It sounds really implausible.

With those sorts of numbers you would think things would be well run.

Pretty comparable with other states and Territories I imagine. I know NSW is also about one public servant (combined local and state) for every 16 people which is a marginally more than here.

This includes teachers, the guys who mow the lawns, nurses, emergency services etc as well as your policy wonks

> “There are now 22,000 ACT public servants, to service a population of 380,000. Something is not right about this.”

Is this accurate? It sounds really implausible.

With those sorts of numbers you would think things would be well run.

‘Despite marked nimby tendencies in Canberra it is easy to see that big developers building a whole lot of gimcrack high-rise apartments is not all about building a simulacrum of urban sophistication foreign to the “bush capital”.’

If you arranged those phrases vertically you’d have blocks of flats! Simulacrum of urban sophistication? I’m seeing someone’s macchiato disappearing in the air between saucer and lip.

HiddenDragon said :

I was reminded of the Territory’s apparent financial position, and its interesting prioritising of spending, earlier in the week, when I read that “the ACT government could not afford to borrow the [Skycrane firefighting] helicopter from the US without federal funding”.

The aircranes are all subsidised by the federal government. If states want to use them, they chip in. That was a controversial issue for the Tassie bushfires, because Tasmania didn’t request the aircrane that was parked in Victoria doing nothing. Tasmania neither wanted to pay for it, nor had they bother to make sure fueling facilities were available for it.

The ACT has used the aircranes in the past, but isn’t large enough to warrant a full time deployment. So we instead have an extra Bell water bomber stations in the ACT. If a fire brakes out, the aircranes are nearby in NSW anyway and we can bring them in.

Terrible to think you’re allowed to vote.

As for Shanahan, I suspect she either has an ulterior motive, or has never ventured far from some plush mansion in Yarralumla. Certainly praising the suburban success of Canberra in the past and the supposedly terrible higher density construction now is stupid when Bega Court and the rest of the 60-70s higher density blunders still scar the urban landscape.

miz said :

I went to read the article but it is not freely available – will check it out at the library instead.

Miz .. please try JohnBoys tip and google up the headline/byline whatever, and you get around the paywall. I couldn’t remember the headline so just googled her name, and a few items down was the one JohnBoy was referring to.