What’s the Alternative? Matthew Guy Speaks to Planning News

Following our interview with the Planning Minister last month, Planning News sat down with the Shadow Planning Minister Matthew Guy to try to shed light on what we can expect in the planning arena from a government. We should note that the interview took place before the Coalition’s recent announcements pledging to provide more certainty about where development should occur. Perhaps aptly, then, we started by asking about the lack of clarity around Coalition planning policy...

Planning News: Thanks for your time. As we are talking to you today it is less than two months until the State election and the Victorian Liberal Party web site currently lists two policies under the heading of planning. One relates to requiring planning permits for bottle shops, and the other relates to planning controls for wind farms. Is this a sufficient level of policy development and communication for the community to assess the approach of a Liberal Government to planning?

Matthew Guy: We’ve released a number of position statements to date beyond the obvious ones on the web site about our intentions for the Growth Area Infrastructure Charge, for the Urban Growth Boundary, for definition in activities areas, for a new authority to manage urban renewal across . So we’ve listed a number of policy initiatives which have been clear cut and well‐voiced in advance through your publication, as well as others, to let people know exactly where we stand on those issues. A more definitive overall policy will obviously follow at a time during the campaign, but as I said, we’ve been up front on a number of those key areas for some time.

PN: What would you see as the primary priorities in terms of planning policy for a Liberal government?

MG: We see the most important area of planning policy being population management; how we manage our population into the future, whether that’s in existing urban areas, in growth areas, or whether it’s through decentralisation and regionalisation policies. Population growth is central to everything a government does, and that’s how we have approached planning policy.

PN: In terms of on‐the‐ground outcomes from a planning perspective, Melbourne 2030 has been the current State government’s strategic document for directing these outcomes over the last decade. If the Liberals were to form government, would you scrap it, or start over, or are there any sort of departures we might be able to expect?

MG: Well the thing about Melbourne 2030 is that we wouldn’t have to scrap it because it appears that the government have already scrapped it themselves: Melbourne @ 5million is such a departure from Melbourne 2030. It kind of beggars belief that the amendments to the State planning scheme to implement Melbourne 2030 are only coming through in 2010, and some of them still haven’t even come through. The Planning Act review was the Planning Minister’s only item of business according to the Government’s Statement of Intentions in 2008, and it still hasn’t been brought on. So we think Melbourne 2030 is well and truly dead and buried as a document; it was a political document more than a planning document. Our planning policy will feature some very, very clear principles about where we think metropolitan planning policy should be, particularly into its integration with regional city development and decentralisation. And we will be not obviously removing Melbourne 2030 from the planning provisions overnight – the planning industry needs a period between the development and construction of what we would believe to be a better metropolitan planning document, focused on planning and outcomes, rather than on the politics of planning, and that would obviously take some time. In the intervening period, then, those planning provisions would remain.

PN: You’ve talked before about population growth being a key issue, which I think we would agree with. Melbourne is going to keep growing and there are no signs of that growth letting up, and one of the prevailing approaches to that issue for a long time has been to encourage urban consolidation in established areas with good infrastructure. Is this an approach you would support?

MG: Look we do, in certain locations. We don’t believe in a one‐size‐fits‐all policy as with Melbourne 2030, or by just allowing open slather along every infrastructure route, as with the Government’s current VC71 amendments. We believe that higher density can be accommodated well in existing areas which have clearly defined boundaries.

One of the issues where we have been on the record is saying that our activities areas do need to have clearly defined boundaries and councils need to get on the job with doing that, and the government needs to come to the party by either encouraging, or bringing councils to make a decision on where those boundaries would be, so people know exactly what can go where. And further I would say there are areas of Melbourne which have substantial potential for large scale urban renewal, not just E‐Gate and Docklands North, but areas around Port Melbourne, Fishermans Bend, Garden City, even off to the south as well, and we believe those areas have substantial ability for population accommodation. This is why we have come out and said that we would establish a government authority, with the same authority as the Docklands Authority had in the Kennett Government period, to manage those suburbs from an industrial base to a predominantly residential base over a period of time.

So yes, we believe that inner urban areas that are established can accommodate greater population, but more than anything we believe that clarity is what is missing at this current time.

PN: So it sounds like what we might call middle suburban areas would be one of your areas of concern...

MG: It is, but I also I think the Government lacks imagination. I don’t know if the Government has ever had a conversation with larger developers towards the greenfields area of Melbourne to say, what will make a medium density suburb work in this area; what do we have to provide at a government end to make something that is medium density – not just one or two parts, but more or less the entire suburb – how do we make it work? Do we need to wipe the slate clean in terms of setback provisions? What do we need to provide infrastructure‐wise, and what tools do we need to give a proponent of that kind of development on a greenfields site in the outer urban area to make that work?

You know we have to think outside of the square on planning and my belief is that after eleven years the Government has lost its ability to think innovatively; it just manages planning day to day. I really think there is the opportunity for us to think beyond that day‐to‐day management. And that’s one thing I say: yes to the middle urban areas there are issues with higher densities, but why wouldn’t we also look at the ability for higher densities on our fringe?

PN: Can I take you back to activity centres: you’ve recently attacked the Government for making changes to the SPPF that, in your words, “allow for huge areas of Melbourne to be developed with high rise towers”1 and referred to Minister Madden’s praise of development on Toorak Road as evidence of a policy of “mandatory high‐rise” along tram routes.2 In terms of bringing the public along on the journey so that they are going to accept some of these increases in density in established areas, don’t you think that talk of mandatory 30 storey development is unnecessarily alarmist and unhelpful?

MG: You know a lot of those comments actually came from what had to say in Parliament, which we found quite astounding. In fact Justin Madden becomes a bit of a walking press release for the when he gets up and talks about higher density, because he did actually say that Toorak Road as it exists now is a perfect example of how things could look under his provisions, and of course Chapel Street as it is now is 30 storeys...

PN: ... But it is a big leap from saying that you think Chapel Street is a good example, to saying that the Government is going to be rolling out mandatory 30 storey development.

MG: What takes the heat out of all of these issues in existing urban areas is certainty, and I say that because the Government is not giving certainty when it simply says any tram line can be developed like Chapel Street. If you’ve actually got certainty to know this is the definition of an activities area, or this is the definition of an area of substantial change, then residents and developers and councils know what area can be developed and what can’t. Rob Adams actually said it perfectly when he said there should be green zones and red zones, and what we need to do is establish those zones so that people know exactly what is a green zone and what is a red zone. I agree with that principle.

PN: You mentioned local government not necessarily providing the clarity on, for example, edges of activity centres; in terms of defining those green zones and red zones, do you see that as a state government role or a local government role?

MG: I think local government has a role to hurry up and do that as soon as possible, and if they’re stalling on that then the state government has a role to set a date where they want them done by; and if they don’t meet them to obviously take the matter into its own hands. If Councils come back with unsatisfactory boundaries or with no outcome, then they need to be held responsible for their actions. I don’t believe just that the state government should be held responsible for its actions; I believe local government should too. And they have to accept that there will be population change, and areas of change within every municipality, and Councils need to have those areas identified. And they can play a role in allaying people’s fears about built form change by actually providing clear definitions about where those boundaries will be.

PN: It’s a theme of the opposition’s approach to planning being criticism of Ministerial call‐ins and removal of public rights. At the end of the day the issue of intervention often amounts to a choice between development facilitation and letting the public have their say. We note the Liberal party platform states that the Liberals believe in decentralisation and distribution of power and that you believe local decisions are best made at the local level. How would you interpret that in a planning context and what role you see for state government in operating in such a manner?

MG: I’ll be clear on call‐ins. The reason we criticise the government on their regime of call‐ins is because for nine and a half years, they made it very clear that if the Liberals were elected, the Planning Minister (and they referred to me as “mini‐MacLellan”) would call everything in. And then they had a change overnight, established the development facilitation unit, and then believed suddenly in call‐ins. So my argument against the government on call‐ins is purely based on hypocrisy.

And when it comes to developments around the city, unfortunately, it’s not as attractive for the media to run a comment from the opposition supporting a development. So we’ve criticised the Minister for not playing a more interventionist role in encouraging larger developments. For example, the Minister’s last approval in the Hoddle grid, just behind the Age building, it was quite a large development where a thirty story tower was approved, and we criticised the Minister for not encouraging the developer to go larger. Here we have a signature site for Melbourne. We have Eureka which is 300 metres, the CUB site which will be around a 300 metre tower; we should be looking to provide substantial buildings in these locations, and if the Minister is going to approve those, he should be actually encouraging where possible the developers to build larger on substantial sites. So we don’t always disagree with Ministerial decisions, particularly on call‐ins.

The other thing I would note is that the government claim they have called in $9 billion worth of planning work since the development facilitation unit has begun, but what they have in fact done is simply referred to a panel a substantial proportion of those projects, or simply assisted in the rezoning – I mean, they’re not actually beginning the works on those projects. What they are doing is maybe calling in a half of one step of a ten step program. To take credit for being the decision‐ maker on that project is I think pushing it a little far, and that’s what we have criticised them for.

PN: Would you then be more likely if you were Planning Minister to call those in and approve the whole thing?

MG: No, I think call‐ins are a special responsibility that the Planning Minister has, for projects of significance, and I think that a more accountable regime of call‐ins would provide a reporting mechanism back to Parliament as to why projects have been called in. But I say again, I don’t oppose Ministerial call‐in at all; there are projects where it is an important tool to use, and that should remain.

PN: How does that then relate to the issue of the VCAT major cases list? Do you support the idea of having a separate list for fast‐tracking major development, or do you feel that there should be a better resourcing and overall streamlining of the system so that everybody’s on an equal footing going through?

MG: Well the problem with the major cases list is that like everything at VCAT the government is starving it of funds and it’s now stating to blow out in terms of its time delay. With no money going into VCAT there’s fewer people being hired and as a consequence the list is getting longer.

When the Labor party were in opposition, they opposed the equivalent of the major cases list under the Kennett government and vowed to scrap it. And of course, that is one of the issues that again I would criticise them over being hypocritical. In relation to VCAT itself, my view is that with good state planning policy you shouldn’t have to have so many cases heading off to VCAT. If you have good state planning policy, and clear definition – possibly based off a code assessment principle which Vancouver has had in place for some time – then there shouldn’t be necessarily appeals left right and centre going to VCAT. And further, if Councils in many respects were taking responsibility for their actions and actually making a decision on projects rather than letting them time out and then head to VCAT, then again, we wouldn’t have a lot of the problems that we have in terms of VCAT being full of cases.

PN: VCAT’s list tends to be populated by the fact that people are unhappy with decisions, and have the right to appeal them. Clearer policy, per se, isn’t going to make that go away. Are you suggesting that you’d be winding back the extent of third party review rights?

MG: No, not at all. You’re quite right, a lot of the cases at VCAT are around people who are unhappy with a decision and I guess it comes down to a possible debate for the future and that is whether or not something is substantially non‐compliant with an MSS, whether or not it then can go to the next step, then that’s something that should be examined. You are right though, the majority are people who are unhappy with the decision, and I guess you could never solve that problem until you properly resource VCAT to do the job.

PN: Just going back to the discussion of Ministerial decisions, obviously one of the big ones this year was the Windsor, and you were very critical of the government’s handling of that application. One of the key things that raised was the whole issue of political and media advisers and their role in shaping planning decisions. What specific assurances would you be able to give that a Liberal government’s approach would actually be different? For example, would the Liberal government commit to making media plans publicly available, and to not using taxpayer funded staff for party‐ political purposes?

MG: We have committed to making those plans available, and one of the issues I found astounding about that whole Windsor affair was that if the government had come out and been frank and honest about what had occurred at the very start there would have been almost no issue to follow on for almost the next seven or eight months. And it’s always the case that the cover up or the denial creates the issue rather than being open and frank and admitting that there was a problem.

There was a problem; and the problem was that the Minister for Planning’s media submission to the Premier’s office for that week ahead, they listed a clear concoction around the public consultation to do with the Windsor Hotel. That puts into doubt all of the public consultation phases that have occurred previously. If the government has, in the middle of the public consultation phase, put into its media strategies that it already has its mind made up about how a development application should go, then you have to ask: was the Barwon Heads bridge public consultation process a sham; were the three public consultations for Melbourne @ 5 Million shams; was the one for DACs a sham? And of course you’ll remember the one in Melbourne @ 5 Million where the last public consultation phase around the UGB closed on the Monday before Melbourne Cup Day, and the government brought a Bill to Cabinet on the following Monday. That completely beggars belief.

That’s what we would give the assurance on: that public consultation means public consultation. If you don’t want to have it, don’t have it. Don’t waste people’s time. PN: You’d understand though that there’d be cynicism amongst the public, that people in opposition will tend to say that. In the Kennett era there was a lot of criticism of the Liberal government about lack of transparency. Just to be clear, you’re saying things like political and media advice, those sorts of people would be required to appear before enquiries, and that media plans would be required to be made available?

MG: Both. We’ve said both. The Kennett government was eleven years ago. Eleven years ago the world was a very different place. We’re talking about Y2K; the VP Commodore was still top of the range; heart‐shaped glasses were still fashionable. Eleven years ago was a very different time than it is today, and I would say that you renew over time and we’ve done that, but also, how we did operate in the Kennett era was substantially different to the government today. When we had public consultation, people meant it. I remember being an adviser in the Premier’s office, we actually did take things into account, particularly from industry groups, and from Councils, and those submissions meant something. Nowadays, it’s just done as part and parcel of spin. And I think that insincerity is what is very different from ourselves today, and even in the Kennett period, versus the current mob.

PN: Can I take you to a specific issue? You’ve suggested that there is a contradiction between the Government’s approach to climate related flood risk and bushfire risk. So, in relation to coastal development in areas potentially subject to sea level rise, you’ve said that “Labor is absurdly penalising Victorians wanting to build on private land at private risk,” and contrasted that to their approach in bushfire prone areas.3 Yet the Coalition has supported all of the bushfire royal commission’s recommendations, which included the targeted acquisition of bushfire prone land. Doesn’t the same contradiction therefore exist in reverse in Coalition policy?

MG: No, no, quite to the contrary. What we’re saying is that we will take responsibility in saying if there is an area subject to fire risk, then we’ll examine what we can do to make those areas safer, and as the Bushfire Royal Commission report says, if some areas are potentially too dangerous to be built, then the government needs to play a role in managing people from being in those locations, and we’ve said that we will take that on board.

In relation to Lake’s Entrance in particular, where I was last week, what you have is the government placing a moratorium over development in the activities area of Lakes Entrance, where it’s already 95% built up, on the possibility that at an extreme flood peak in the year 2100 a vast area of the central part of the town may be covered in flood. Now, to penalise a private developer at private risk for building two storeys on that block of land because it may be subject to inundation – not some tidal wave, but a slow three day inundation – is taking it far to the extreme. If the Government says “we can’t manage people out of bushfire areas, that’s all too difficult,” yet they want to put a moratorium on a town from building two storeys abutting a six storey development, I think there is gross hypocrisy.

There are people up in Narrawong near Portland I encountered who can’t even build a shed on their property, because the Minister has put a moratorium over their land, despite them being on the north side of the Glenelg highway, 1.4 kilometres inland, and the Minister says “well you may be subject to flood risk in the future.” Well I put to the minister that the desalination plant is half that height above sea level, and it isn’t one‐and‐a‐half kilometres inland either. So again I come back to the word consistency, if one rule applies to government, then I think it should apply to private land too.

PN: In terms of planning system reform, can you elaborate on what you see as the future of the Planning & Environment Act Review if the coalition forms government?

MG: I’d like to see it first! Like everyone, I haven’t seen the Bill, I’ve seen the draft. I think most of what I’ve seen in it looks like another band aid solution. I don’t want to be a Minister who comes in and simply band‐aids the planning system for another four to five years.

I think what we actually need to do is look at how we do business in planning in , and is this the way best suited for the next thirty to forty years. You know, we had large reviews in the mid 1980s, which produced very different outcomes. It is a very different system to what it was in the 1950s for example, and we have to analyse the basis of the planning system in Victoria and whether we are doing it the best way we should. I point to the principles of code assessment which Vancouver has put in place quite successfully, and we should be looking round the world and saying, that if we do have these issues with VCAT and the 1800 cases backed up before it, and issues with the Councils and governments brawling over local planning policy and governments having to bring in VC71s to accommodate population growth, then you know, surely there is a problem with the way we do business in relation to planning in Victoria.

So I would want to be a reformist Minister when it comes to planning, not one who simply comes in and looks at the furniture and puts a couple of band aids on a broken planning system, and then brings in another task force and adds a few more people to the system and a few more cogs to the wheel to slow it all down again. Which is apparently how business has been done over the last ten years, and I think we need to change that mentality.

PN: So you have talked a few times about code assess and increased certainty; it seems like then that is potentially heralding a shift away from the prevailing culture of performance based controls – which have been the norm really since the VPPs, which were a Kennett‐era reform – towards more prescriptive controls. Is that fair to say?

MG: Yes that’s absolutely right, and in some areas they will be more prescriptive than others. You would have thought that if you have a code assess model in somewhere like, Albert Park, it might be far more prescriptive than in Docklands. So yes, that’s true and I would think that there is a way of doing business that could be trialled that is different. And I say trialled because it may work or it may not, but I think we actually have to look at the way we do business in a different frame from what we have done before.

As I said Vancouver does present some good examples for us to learn from. We have to get away from this view that everything we do is world’s best practice because it’s not, certainly hasn’t been in my view over the last ten years, and as I said, a code assess model can have very different outcomes – depending on how prescriptive you want to be with it – but that’s one thing I think there should be debate around, on how we go forward.

PN: One of the things in the Act Review is the process for planning scheme amendments, which has concerned a lot of councils, particularly the idea that developers could come along and initiate planning scheme amendments. Did you have any opinions on that as a model to speed up or allow greater intervention in the system?

MG: I’m not sure that’s going to do much except create further confrontation in planning in Victoria. I’m not sure that’s the be‐all and end‐all answer, just allowing a third party to begin the process of planning scheme amendments.

It would be helpful if the Government in doing that would also say that a council could commence a planning scheme amendment without having to obtain ministerial approval as well ‐ I mean, if you’ve got a developer able to do that, why shouldn’t a council? You know, not all councils want to commence a planning scheme amendment to hinder development: there are plenty, particularly in the north west, who actually have been trying to put some forward in their own municipalities which have found it very difficult for the Minister to actually sign off. One of the issues with that is that it has been found independently that most of these documents sit on his desk for about nine months, on average. Now, if they’re putting councils under the pump in terms of timeframes, then the Government has got to have some responsibility to act promptly as well.

PN: We look forward to more specific and binding timeframes for the Minister obviously.

MG: You’ll get it.

PN: We interviewed the Minister last month and were asking about the various reviews of VPPs underway, and those are delayed until after the election at the moment. The fate of those becomes even less clear if the Coalition forms government. Beyond what you’ve already said, what do you see as the priorities for actual planning scheme reform under a Coalition government?

MG: Well it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’d be further delayed if there is a change of government. It all depends on the speed of that government and the will within that government to act on issues it has before it. There are a number of specific examples, you will see in policy, that we believe could be looked at and should be further looked at, that doesn’t necessarily need to be slower under a Coalition government. You will see stuff on that [before the election].

PN: So are there areas of planning scheme reform you are willing to identify, two months out from an election, that would be the areas of the scheme that you think are the most rewarding to focus on?

MG: There will be, yes.

PN: But this close to the election, you still can’t identify them?

MG: That will be in the substantive policy document that will be released in the next couple of weeks.

PN: Well, thank you for your time. ●

1 “Labor’s Open Slather for Suburban High Rise,” Liberal Party press release, 21 September 2010, http://tinyurl.com/2ezs5d9 2 “Labor Backs 30 Storey Towers Along Tram Routes,” Liberal Party press release, 1 September 2010, http://tinyurl.com/28e527j

3 “Brumby’s Flood and Fire Contradiction,” Liberal Party press release, 12 August 2010, http://tinyurl.com/27jaew5