Editorial licence

Bernard McNamara Editor and Director, BMDA Development Advisory

Welcome to, hopefully, a very different year in 2021. Before writing this, I looked back at my March 2020 editorial which focused heavily on the devastating and widespread bushfires that ravaged our lands in the Spring and Summer of 2019-20. Who could have foreseen then that the emerging virus would have changed so abruptly and significantly our way of interacting, working and living?

We are now pandemic veterans. Zooming, M-Teaming and other platforms are what we do.

Around Christmas 2019, I was reading Richard Florida’s treatise on the importance of the concentration of knowledge workers. In less than 12 months, detached houses with gardens are now preferred over apartments, with their shared lifts and facilities.

In our sector, incomes have generally continued at varying levels, although in our community and social circles, we’ve no doubt all observed good businesses being forced to close due to the long lockdown.

The arts and hospitality sectors have been particularly vulnerable.

Melbourne’s arts, food and bar scenes are Australian leaders in my view, but I’m giving Sydney a gong for its transport system.

The rail network is clean, well interconnected and fast. Using all the various pt modes involves a simple tap of a credit card, rather than an equivalent of the disastrous Myki. (Apparently Melbourne was at the time of Myki’s introduction, the only large city in the world with a dedicated Ticket ‘Authority’… go figure.)

The bus network is taken seriously and has an undertone of quiet civility. Everyone tapped on at the fare scanner (!) and on several morning peak-hour trips, I witnessed large groups of schoolchildren waiting patiently until adult passengers boarded before them. Most of those same children thanked the bus driver when leaving the bus.

after the lockdowns, the challengeVictoriafaces is to build back local and international business confidence.

For various reasons, Victorians were impacted more than other states. It has been interesting to observe some of the processes that operated across our state and elsewhere. Even an important contact tracing tool such as a statewide QR code, that was operating in NSW and SA, could not be managed in Victoria, where at different venues, we encountered all varieties of codes, plus the exercise book and pen!

It made me reflect on the operation of our planning and building approvals systems which are the subject of Better Regulation Victoria’s, Planning and Building Regulations Process Review Report. At the end of the 1990s, Victoria’s planning approval system was highly regarded nationally. But in 2021, is the performance of our planning approvals systems reflected in our other systems? In this edition, Anna Cronin, the Commissioner for Better Regulation sets out the positive steps that the State Government is now implementing.

Tale of Two Cities

While I’m a Melbourne man through and through, I had cause to reflect on the positives of Sydney during a recent trip with my partner, including through the Feb 13-17 Victorian lockdown.

I am not seeking to emulate the famous de Tocqueville observations – contrasting systems in Europe and America in the 1830s – but I noticed some (uncomfortable) differences in livability and productivity between ‘Coathanger city’ and our own.

Traffic appears to move fast, with expectations that everybody should do the same. (Road rage? Well, I didn’t see any.)

And unlike in Melbourne, I did not see any graffiti on various buildings, or on the hoardings of the new underground railway lines being constructed in North and Central Sydney.

In visiting a sick relative, we observed NSW’s well organized health system working very effectively at a district level. To the casual observer, Sydney takes a ‘no fuss/ ‘get on with it’ approach. A bit brash, but there is a detectable entrepreneurial air in city.

Comparing Sydney with our own area of practice, it has invested real powers in the Sydney Planning Commission, unlike the VPA. The implementation of the planning system reforms is welcome and necessary.

More broadly after the lockdowns, the challenge Victoria faces is to build back local and international business confidence, requiring highly efficient operating systems (including health), plus new infrastructure. How we engender some behavioral changes is a separate and more difficult challenge.

A two-speed planning system?

Notable over December and January, the Victorian Government has ramped up its commitment to social housing through the funding commitments under the Big Build housing program. The Government has allocated $5bn to produce 12,000 much needed new homes over 4 years. A controversial part of the program has been the introduction of Cl 52.20 and Cl 52.22, each with over 22 pages of non-mandatory provisions that are to apply to applications. Basically, the Clauses pick up various provisions from Cl 54 ,55 and 58 (residential design) and Cl 52.06 (car parking), plus other items so that there is no need to address other sections of the Planning Scheme. All applications are exempt from notification, objections, and appeal rights. The responsible authority is the State Government. Recently this exemption provision was unsuccessfully challenged in Parliament.

The motive behind the exemptions is very understandable, given the difficulties that are often faced by applications for development of social housing within neighbourhoods. (Even the folks at Yarra CC refused a community housing project which is seen as a poster project on Page43 of Plan Melbourne 2017-2050.)

What resonates with me is that the Minister for Planning strongly ruled out at the commencement of the Planning Reform work, any change to third party rights.

In my practice, we act for independent not-for-profit housing providers who have no such protection. Objector rights etc apply. And no ‘free rides’ are on offer for the important housing role played by the private sector (with the rise of the Build to Rent sector being implemented).

So increasingly with road, rail, housing, and other projects, (with their huge scale of investment), are we moving to a State where maybe half of all construction is exempt from third party rights. Two speed… how can we get our projects into the fast lane?

And to this edition

The Revue continues to provide an outlet for Housing for all Australians, a project being steered by Rob Pradolin. On a related note, Sam D’Amico identifies a glitch in the VPPs which is causing unintended consequence on the provision of social housing.

I also commend to you the DELWP article setting out the advances in its Smart Cities 3D mapping and documentation program. We meet the new members of the VPELA Committee, and our future leaders, (the new team leading the Young Planners Group).

Victorian Planning Authority, CEO, Stuart Mosely, updates us on the work occurring by way of fast-tracking planning approvals, growth areas planning and urban renewal projects.

And from the editor’s office, we have included a somewhat lighthearted list of the 10 most common errors/mistakes that applicants continue to make on the pathway to a development approval. Readers may have others.

Happy reading. As usual, comments/contributions to: e: bernard.mcnamara@bmda.com.au