Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion regarding urban planning and the need for better urban planning for our major cities in particular. There are some elements in this motion that are quite credible and reasonable. But, if you are arguing that the government does things, including planning, better than the market, you should take a trip to Sydney and examine this thesis. The armies of departmental urban planners, with their restrictions and regulations, have produced quite a chaotic and difficult situation for people, particularly those living in outer metropolitan areas of Sydney. I would like to make a few suggestions to improve the wording of the motion. Point (1)(c) of the motion says ‘urban planning fosters quality planning’. I suggest ‘urban planning can foster quality planning but not always’. Where the motion says that urban planning produces good ‘social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits’, I suggest ‘urban planning can produce good social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits but not always’.

When it comes to the government taking over all of the decision making on urban planning for our cities, in my view less can often mean more. States have planned too much and for too many requirements, and there are too many restrictions. The states that restricted and planned the most have lost development to rival states. I come from New South Wales, and two of the members sitting in the chamber tonight come from Queensland. No developer will tell you that they are looking to invest in properties for urban development in New South Wales at the moment. They are interested in Queensland and Victoria because of their better regulatory environments. Let us not kid ourselves about that.

The contention in this motion that government always produces a better outcome because it has departments to look at things is one that neither the major developers in Australia nor many people in my electorate would accept. Indeed, the community in north-western Sydney has had to suffer through a very poor, ill-thought-out series of policies from the New South Wales state Labor government in the form of green zones. As part of a draft plan for the future of north-west Sydney and the north-west development area, the government, after very limited consultation, decided to impose green zones on the properties of the local residents in those areas. Restrictions were placed on private properties, limiting livestock and undermining their rural usage and the ability of residents to sell or develop their land. These restrictions have disadvantaged members of my community and significantly devalued these properties. The minister, Frank Sartor, was forced to back down in a very embarrassing and ugly episode once he realised the heat of the situation that he and his army of bureaucrats with their planning nightmare had created in north-west Sydney.

We know that we have a housing affordability crisis. I and all of the major charities in my electorate can tell you that we have a rental affordability crisis. We need to develop more land for housing and rental stock. The north-west sector of Sydney provides great opportunity for this development. The minimum lot sizes of 20 hectares and 40 hectares, which apply in the northern part of my electorate and further out, need to change. We need to have smaller sized lots. We need to develop the area for housing. That would be a good urban plan. But the attempt to create green zones shows that many of our urban planning departments have become captives of the conservation movement. I was very fortunate to witness a planning expert present some criteria about planning overseas and in Australia. If you take a map of the entire continent of Australia and condense all of the urban land within it into a circle, you will see that it represents a very small circle on that map. So the contention that we are running out of land shows another planning failure by our urban planning areas in state government departments.

People in my electorate of Mitchell would not contend that government does urban planning better than the market. There is a need for government to play a role in many areas of planning, but if you look at one of the fastest growing areas of Sydney, Mitchell, which I represent, and if you look at the failures of planning infrastructure—

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