Posted 15/5/06

PLANNING BACKLASH Launch

Speech by Dr. Tony Recsei,  Save Our Suburbs (Sydney, NSW)   www.sos.org.au

3 May 06   Rally, Steps of  Parliament House,  Melbourne

We do need to coordinate our activities if we are to be able to save what is dear to all of us.  This is a wonderful opportunity to start the ball rolling down that path. That is the reason why I am speaking to you today.

Our similarities are more significant than any alleged differences.  We have much in common. We all suffer from the offhand manner in which the politicians treat us.   I want to tell you about what has been happening in NSW and I hope that you will be able to avoid the path we have been treading there.

We live in a wonderful country.  We have sun, we have sea and we have space.   To many, we are the envy of the world.

Yet there are forces doing their utmost to destroy our unique Australian way of life. In NSW there is the ram, cram and jam brigade who control planning. These people want us to live packed together on top of one another like chooks in battery cages.  They say living like this will improve transport, save money and save the environment.

I am here to tell you that the benefits they claim do not happen and that the consequences of their misguided policies are only now becoming evident. Higher densities do not improve the urban situation.  I wrote an article to this effect in the Monash University journal People and Place.  All I did was to tell it like it is.  There was one response to my article and I replied to this response.  Since then the high-density brigade has gone quiet.

Let me inform you about some of the matters on which I challenged the high-density advocates. They say high-density will improve traffic.   We all know that just the opposite occurs – as density increases, traffic density and delays get worse. More of something in a confined space means more congestion, not less.  You would think that is not too hard to understand. In spite of 10 years of high-density, Sydneysiders are finding that journeys are taking longer and longer.  And that is not all.  With congestion, air pollution goes up dramatically.  That air pollution kills three times as many people as do traffic accidents.

High density costs all of us money.  In Chatswood in Sydney huge high-rises have replaced low-density.  The result is the sewers overflowed.  The authorities then hurriedly put in an additional main sewer costing more than 10 million dollars.  That did not solve the problem. We see pictures in the local newspapers of children on their way to school walking past welled-up sewage in the streets.  Those responsible should have their noses rubbed in it. Our infrastructure was designed for the original housing density.  Add more people and you must overload the sewers, overload our roads, overload the electricity and water supply.

Another appalling outcome of these policies is that the cost of housing in Sydney has skyrocketed.  The NSW government restricts the release of land and so land has become scarce.  Anything that is scarce goes up in price.  We all know that.  This hits our young people, it hits the socially disadvantaged.  Many of our young people can no longer afford the Australian dream, their own home.  People can’t afford the increasing rents and are moving out of Sydney.  High density is a disaster for social equity.

High density is bad for the environment. What is the first thing that happens when high-density is built?   They cut down the trees.  With high-density there is more noise, more heat, more hard surfaces.  Rain has nowhere to go except to rush down the streets carrying pollution into our waterways. People become disconnected from nature. In Sydney high-rise developments have been also called suicide towers. A study of 4.4 million Swedes has shown why.  The researchers found that the rates for psychosis were 70% greater for the denser areas.  And in Australia, Professor Cummings in his comprehensive Australian Unity Well-being Index reports that the happiest people are those in lower population densities.

A few years ago we visited some friends in Kottbuss in East Germany.  Like all East Germans at the time they lived in a unit.  But as with many East Germans they also have a dacha, a little house with a garden in the country, that they lovingly tend and in which they spend most of their free time. Since that time things have moved on.  In East Germany around a million apartments have been abandoned.  New owner-occupiers commonly build their own home on a plot they purchase. The trend with many unit dwellers in Sydney seems to be that they tend to own or rent beach houses to which they frequently travel considerable distances.

So those are some of the things I wrote about.  Things that are obvious.  We can be certain that the benefits they claim for high-density are hogwash.  If something is not true it is not true.

No amount of wishful thinking

no amount of spin      

no amount of lies

 

will make it true.

All I do is to tell it like it is.   I managed to point out on TV that some high density developers legally give huge donations to the major political parties.  As we might expect they then get permission to build more high-density.  This helps them make large profits from which they give yet more political donations.  And so the wheel turns on and on.  Donations, high-density permission, profits. Of course it is you and I who ultimately pay for this through the excessive cost of housing. Manipulation can only operate if our politicians allow it to.  Sort that out – and we have solved the problem. This responsibility falls squarely onto the politicians. Save Our Suburbs believes that political donations from developers should be banned.

I must tell you about the cunning way high density is forced onto communities in NSW. There are 38 municipal councils in Sydney.  The Planning Department demands that each municipal council submit to it a plan that will rezone the residential areas to higher density.  The Department than gives these rezoning plans to high-density developers to evaluate. These same developers will later be building unit blocks in these Council areas.  Talk about a conflict of interest.  The Department of Planning rejects any Sydney council zoning plan that will not be sufficiently profitable for the high-density developers.  In such cases they threaten to take away a council’s planning powers.  The Department did this to my Council and authorised six-storey unit blocks to be built in the area.

But the real crafty part comes once the high-density rezoning plan is in place.  The Council itself is obliged to process the individual development applications from developers to build the high rises to be built in the area.   The public then blame their councillors for the resulting overdevelopment   The Department of Planning and the State Politicians who forced the rezoning onto the Council in the first place, escape the public anger.  So that is the way they do it in NSW.

They are now going even further with their bullying tactics.  Legislation has just been rammed through the NSW Parliament to allow the Planning Minister at his whim to appoint an administrator to carry out a Council's planning functions.  Never mind democracy. This includes setting controls and giving consent. The Council then must reimburse the Government for the costs of this appointment!  During the second reading debate of this legislation, the Opposition did not vote. We are told this is because they did not want to be seen voting against the legislation for fear of upsetting the development lobby.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have to beat the ram, cram and jam brigade. Save Our Suburbs in NSW has been consistently confronting the Planning Department and our shots may be hitting home. Three ministers have come and gone. The so-called Sydney Sustainability Commissioner has been sacked, the Metropolitan Strategy Committee disbanded,  two Directors-General of the Planning Department have gone, as have many other senior functionaries. The Department is currently advertising for five Executive Directors.  But we have to keep on.   Our meeting here today could be a turning point. The way forward is to present a united front.  We have to show the politicians we mean business.   We have to show them they must listen to ordinary Australians.  Our parliamentary representatives must not be hostage to vested interests or dogmatic ideologs.  We have to show them that unless they listen to us they will feel pain at the ballot box.