Evidence based planning

Cost-benefit analysis of Toondah Harbour plan

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Governments in Australia often use cost-benefit analysis to assess if a  project would benefit the community. The technique is meant to add up all the benefits and all the costs and give a ‘net benefit’.

There is plenty of room for argument about what are the costs and what are the benefits and how to value these. Even more passion is generated by questions of who gets the benefits and who suffers the costs. Cost-benefit analysis is poor at dealing with matters of winners and losers. 

Proponents of building 3,600 apartments on publicly owned lands and wetlands at Toondah Harbour claim this will benefit the community. For some, jobs are the benefit; for others it is waterfront boulevards or a better harbour that saves public money.

Properly executed, a thorough cost-benefit analysis might inform both the community and government decision makers about whether or not there would be a public benefit if development at Toondah were to proceed.

Public benefit assessments should cover every aspect of a project – environmental, social and cultural as well as private profit. To give a simple example, a test of deciding on a new railway should include whether construction costs and environmental damage done by building the rail corridor are outweighed by travel time saved by commuters and reduced carbon emissions by moving people and freight by rail instead of road.

Queensland Treasury has issued a Project Assessment Framework for doing public benefit analysis for projects within the state. It states the aim is to provide ‘detailed risk, financial, economic, budget, social and environmental analyses of each of the options’.

Infrastructure Australia, an independent body advising the Federal Government, uses the same kind of project analysis. So does Building Queensland, which advises the State Government.

Cost-benefit analysis in the Toondah EIS

The guidelines set for the environment impact statement (EIS) for the proposed Toondah Harbour development require such analysis to be completed by the project developer. The relevant part of the EIS guidelines is shown in figure 1.

A cost-benefit analysis for the Toondah project is required by the Federal Government's guidelines for preparation of an Environment Impact Statement (EIS).
Figure 1 – Extract from Toondah Harbour EIS guidelines (EPBC 2018/8225)

For the cost-benefit analysis in the EIS to have public credibility, the work would need to include details of all community infrastructure benefits which the developer is required to provide and any obligations of Redland City Council to provide benefits such as free or subsidized infrastructure to the developer. This information forms part of the Toondah Development Agreement which has not been made publicly available.

Doing cost-benefit analysis

The Walker Group’s development plan

The essence of the task is to assess costs and benefits to the community. These are not necessarily the same as the costs and benefits incurred and received by a developer. For example, project payments, revenue and profits which go to people outside the area and even overseas give little benefit to the community especially if no or little tax is paid on them. Likewise, impacts of increased noise, traffic and dis-amenity fall on the community and not on the developer.

The hard part is to define the community and to identify the relevant costs and benefits. A rigorous and credible analysis includes the following:

  • It is comparative – between doing and not doing the project and doing it at different scales and in different ways. For Toondah, the costs and benefits of building the project must be compared with leaving the environment alone. There might also be comparisons with different options (eg, a marina or no marina; 1,000 apartments compared with 3,600).
  • All impacts must be recognised, described and assessed – economic, environmental, ecological, hydrological, social, cultural.
  • The analysis considers the additional, marginal impacts on public well-being that stem from the development. The analysis must ignore the effects of what is already occurring. In the case of Toondah, impacts of extra usage of the port stemming from the Minjerribah Economic Transition Strategy are not part of the analysis.
  • On the other hand, analysis should take account of business and social activity that is transferred from elsewhere to a new development. In the Toondah case this would include loss of economic activity such as shopping and eating elsewhere in Cleveland.
  • The economics of Toondah include any extra productive economic activity in the Cleveland area such as extra rates payments to the Redland City Council, saving or increases in dredging and maintenance costs for the boat harbour and channel, changes in costs and revenue for barge and water taxi operators, higher charges (such as parking costs) for regular uses. It will also include the costs of providing and maintaining roads, water, sewage and other physical infrastructure and health, education and social services and facilities for the increased population stemming from the development.
  • Ecological costs and benefits for Toondah include impacts on birds, fish and land and sea mammals from various things such as loss of habitat, impacts of dredging and disturbance of acid-sulphate residues and greater boat movements. There might also be some improved habits for some animals and birds moving into built-areas.
  • Social issues include health, education and welfare and things such as alteration of amenity and recreation areas. For example, current users of off-lease dog areas (owners as well as dogs) may well regard the change as a cost but those who can promenade in coffee shops may see it as a new benefit.

There also needs to be a separate evaluation of the impact of the Toondah Harbour  development from the perspective of Quandamooka First Nations’ people. Put plainly, what does it mean to have further obliteration of 25,000 years of history.

Valuing the impacts

What is the value of a koala colony in a cost-benefit analysis?
What is the value of a koala colony?

The most contentious aspect of cost-benefit analysis is putting values, usually dollar values, to the impacts. This is relatively straight-forward for extra infrastructure or income from parking charges. It is especially difficult to put costs on loss of bird habitat or recreational amenity.

Some techniques are available – for example surveying the community to come up with a figure as to how much people would be willing to donate to stop habitat loss. However all of these require what are sometimes heroic assumptions simply because there is no market in nature. Even more obvious things such as valuing time gained or lost because of congestion are difficult. It is relatively easy to put a cost (or gain) on a commercial delivery truck which has a slower or faster run. But how to value the time of people out of the work-force or who are on holiday?

Three other things complicate valuing impacts:

  • Dealing with the risk or probability of high cost events such as how is the risk of dugong strikes to be assessed? And what about the chance of acid-sulphate and other residues wiping out commercial and recreational fishing? Climate change is also an issue since higher sea levels may well reduce the future value of the property. Note that both Infrastructure Australia and Building Queensland require a risk assessment of climate change. 
  • The timing of major costs and benefits across the life of the project is a second issue. Almost all analysis puts a premium on costs and benefits which arise early in the life of the project. Costs and benefits that arise later in the life of the project are discounted.  Assumptions about when costs and benefits will occur can have a critical effect on measuring the public benefit in present day terms.
  • The discount or interest rate which is applied to future costs and benefits is the third complicating factor. It involves some serious philosophical/ ethical issues about the relative importance put on present and future generations.

Taken together there is real danger that the technical complexity in these matters will obscure the fundamental issues and make it extremely difficult for the public to participate in the process. Moreover, since the developer and their consultants prepare the EIS they make all the assumptions including about what impacts to consider, timing, discount rate and dollar values. The assessors (and critics) of the EIS are often reduced to ticking boxes about progress and process.

A balanced assessment

A cost-benefit analysis must be treated as an aide to political decision-making. It is not a substitute. Most critically of all, the public must insist that some impacts are to be considered in absolute not relative terms. This means that a project should only be allowed to proceed if it can guarantee that the absolute impacts will not occur.

In the case of Toondah Harbour, adverse impact on the First Nations peoples’ country is, for me, one such absolute. Another is ensuring that there is no further damage to vulnerable eco-systems. Both, I think, are matters that sit above the economic calculus.

Howard Guille
Minjerribah

Editor’s Note: A reputable planning process and an informed community need tools like a Benefit Cost analysis to even contemplate a development of the scale of this PDA. This article examines the purpose and components of a BCA.

The article is published as a case study but refers to the Toondah Harbour development in Cleveland. Asplanned that there will be 3600 apartments constructed …in the Bay off the coast of Cleveland. It involves the allocation of public assets worth $4-500 Million under cover of the PDA processes.

For more information about Toondah, readers advised to look at the website of Redlands2030.net

The grass isn’t greener in the outer ‘burbs

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Urban expansion is driving people further out, and it’s unsustainable. www.shutterstock.com

Robert Nelson, Monash University

For a long a time real estate close to the palace was socially desirable, and anyone with aspirations didn’t want to know about the rest.

Today in Melbourne inner-city people are embarrassed to reveal knowledge of the outer suburbs such as South Morang, like 17th century Parisians who would mispronounce the street-names of poorer areas or affect not to know them at all.

Throughout history, the distribution of wealth has had a geographical expression. Snobbery, however, is only part of the challenge of urban geography.

Power and privilege are concentrated within 10kms of the city centre. Within this zone are expensive schools, galleries, cafes, majestic parks, concerts, grand buildings and much that a Parisian might recognise, all within cycling distance. The closer to the city you get the more railway stations and tram lines they are, as the public transport network converges on the centre.

Beyond the ring road

Services and destinations thin out the further out you go. That’s where the less well-off live. It’s a long drive to school, work, shops, doctors, or leisure centres. The dominant mode of transport is by car, which creates congestion. Families lose time to frustrating commutes. The roads are deadly for bikes and demoralising by foot. Bus services are few and far between.

To be less well-off means to endure greater hardship: less fun time and more grind; and fewer amenities and opportunities for yourself and children. In a society with egalitarian traditions, this disparity of wealth is ugly.

When inequity has a geographical expression, compensations are invoked as if by reflex. There is a compelling case to redress the terms of disadvantage. These calls to pour money into the outer city — a modest $10 billion — have great moral force, matching the positive discrimination that already operates in universities, where low socio-economic status is defined geographically.

On top of the enlightened ethical basis of these calls to reform and greater funding for the expanding outer suburbs, there are pragmatic reasons for politicians to listen: the outer areas form swinging electorates.

It’s a convincing case in many ways, except for one, which is cripplingly difficult to deal with. And here’s the moral rub.

Sprawling problem

Since the 1970s, we have known that the sprawl is ecologically, economically and socially damaging. Authors have written protests against the trend, objecting to the exorbitant cost of providing services and warning of the reliance on motor transport. Alas these monitory counsels have always fallen on deaf ears. The suburbs have grown consistently and inexorably.

This is in part due to the inner areas, which don’t want to accommodate more people. Protecting the low density of the inner suburbs of Australian cities, the outer suburbs have grown ever outward.

People use the phrase “voted with their feet”, as if an exodus to the outer suburbs is a consumer choice, and suburban growth its logical outcome. A house and garden 30kms out is more appealing than an inner suburban flat. By expressing this as a choice of lifestyle, we fail to acknowledge that many have been denied choice by established, inner suburbs. Inner suburbs have made the choice for the outer city by jealously protecting their own low-density living.

Crimes against sustainability

For anyone with a memory of reasoned resistance to the sprawl, it now seems a bit rich to hear complaints from the fringes that the people who have voted with their feet are now tired of their cars. For the better part of 40 years, the community has been advised that the expansion is stupid. Now the people who went ahead regardless are visiting us with the cost of their mistake. But remember, it isn’t just ‘their’ mistake but the logical consequence of our collective mistake, namely to protect the sparsity of established suburbs that enjoy so many amenities.

Thanks to the worst planning in the world, we are left with a very ugly predicament.

On egalitarian grounds, the outer suburbs need to be propped up with subsidised services; and the more we provide them, the more we mask the true costs and negate the natural disincentives for further expansion.

We should have added extra tax to outer suburbs and actively discouraged their growth. Alas, now that they’ve been built and people are forced out, the money flows in the opposite direction and props up their unsustainable (if difficult) fortunes.

Invoking social justice at this juncture is understandable but also insidious. Poorer people are undoubtedly the victims. The one concept however that never translates into action is sustainability. Maybe we should only discuss the social and economic woes of the outer suburbs once the crimes against sustainability are confessed and strategies are firmly in place to demand that all future growth has to be where abundant services and infrastructure already exist.

Robert Nelson, Associate Director Student Experience, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

From Regional Landscape & Open Space to Resource and Landscape Planning 2004 -­ 2012

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Over 8 years, in collaboration with the Regional Landscape & Open Space Advisory Committee and stakeholders across government and industry, successfully envisioned, researched, developed and, in some cases, implemented many significant policies, frameworks, strategies, action plans and reports in the resource and landscape planning and open space arena. Some, but not all, are set out in this report.

2012_09_05_RLP_DBDownload

Key achievements: 2004 – 2012

o Regional Landscape & Open Space Advisory Committee established to succeed the Regional Landscape Strategy Advisory Committee (1997-2003)

o Queensland Greenspace Strategy

o Regional Landscape Planning “Body of Knowledge”

o SEQ Greenspace Network Plan

o SEQ State of Region Report

o Strategic Cropping Land Strategy

o SEQ Active Trails Strategy

• Brisbane Valley Rail Trail Plan and 96km of trail open

• Maroochy River Trail Plan and works completed

• Boonah to Ipswich Trail Plan and 49km of trail open

• Kingaroy to Theebine Trail (Business Plan &Feasibility Study) and key rail assets secured.

o Queensland Outdoor Recreation Strategic Framework

o SEQ Outdoor Recreation Strategy (service providers “mapped”)

o SEQ Scenic Amenity methodology

o SEQ Scenic Amenity Planning Guidelines & Mapping

o SEQ Rural Futures Strategy

o SEQ Rural Precinct Planning Guidelines

o SEQ Outdoor Recreation Demand Studies

o Sustainable Poultry Strategy

o Water Sensitive Urban Design Planning Guideline

o North East Gold coast land use and infrastructure strategy

o Landscape heritage discussion papers

o Indigenous landscape heritage research

o Peri-urban Planning research

o Rural and Greenspace Policy Forum

 Greenspace Working Group

 Outdoor Recreation Working Group

 Rural Futures Working Group

o Regional Landscape Forums:

Living landscapes (Boonah)

 Landscape Corridors (Esk)

Greenspace Planning (BFP)

Regional Recreation Trails Planning (BFP)

Environmental planning student forums (RLOSAC annually)

o SEQ Regional Plan : policy development/review, coordination & implementation

SEQ Regional Plan Desired Regional outcomes 1-5 and 7

The regional landscape planning framework

• Regional landscape areas

• Regional landscape values

• Scenic amenity

• Landscape heritage (indigenous and non-indigenous)

• Outdoor recreation

• Community greenspace

• Inter-urban break planning

• Rural futures

• Natural resources

o Other regional initiatives: key stakeholder/contributor to:

 CEOs Committee for NRM in SEQ

 SEQ Natural Resource Management Plan

 SEQ Ecosystem Services Framework

 Flinders Karawatha Corridor

 Peri-urban research

 Monitoring Reporting and Evaluation framework

Industry Recognition of Achievements

Since 2004, the work of the Branch was regularly recognised for its achievements. Through collaboration with State agencies, universities, local governments, and NGOs, the Branch has been recognised for achievements, including:

Queensland Outdoor Recreation Federation – 2010 Government Achievement Award: South East Queensland Outdoor Recreation Strategy

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2010 Certificate of Merit for the Decision Support Tool for Local Government Planners Integrating SEQ Regional Natural Resource Management Plan Targets into Local Government Planning Schemes

Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) National Council and National Awards- 2010 Planning Minister’s Award: South East Queensland Natural Resource Management Plan 2009-2031

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2009 Overall winner and Planning Scholarship, Research and Teaching Award for Excellence Identifying and Incorporating Indigenous Landscape Values into Regional Planning Processes led by the Urban Research Program, Griffith University.

Queensland Outdoor Recreation Federation – 2010 Government Achievement Award: Brisbane Valley Rail Trail

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2009 Regional Planning Achievement Excellence Award: South East Queensland Natural Resource Management Plan 2009-2013

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2009 Certificate of Merit: North East Gold Coast Land Use Economic and Infrastructure Strategy

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2008 Certificate of Merit: Brisbane Valley Rail Trail Plan

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division – 2008 Award for Excellence: South East Queensland Ecosystem Services Project

Queensland Outdoor Recreation Federation – 2008 Certificate of Appreciation: 5th Biennial National Tracks and Trails Conference

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division- 2007 Certificate of Merit: Policy and Planning Framework for Urban Water Sensitive Design in South East Queensland

Planning Institute of Australia (PIA) National Council and National Awards – 2006 Planning Ministers’ Award: South East Queensland Regional Plan and Infrastructure Plan; Office of Urban Management, Queensland Department of Local Government and Planning

Planning Institute of Australia Queensland Division- 2005 Award for Excellence: Scenic South East Queensland 2004 Public Preference Survey.

The Landscape Planning team signs off in September 2012

Thank’s for all your help, advice & support folks!

FAREWELL, ADIOS, CIAO, AU REVOIR, CHEERS, AUF WEIDERSEHEN MERCI, GRACIAS, GRAZIE, DANKESCHON

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN…….

Steve MacDonald, Dave Batt (Batty), John Rush (JR), Bill MacFarlane, Marie Patamise, Peter Kleis and many many more who are gone but not fogotten…

In your backyard: why people need a say on planning that affects their local community

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When people weren’t asked about a proposed development in their area, they voiced their opposition. Protect Taringa Facebook page

Written by Philippa England, Griffith University

Good planning needs integrity, and public participation should play a role in that.

But a row over a high-rise development proposed for suburban Brisbane shows what happens when the public feels left out of the planning process.

This highlights the problem with what is termed performance-based planning, which allows some controversial applications to be approved with little or no input from the community.

A plan submitted

Aged-care provider TriCare first lodged its application to develop a new facility in June 2017.

Read more: It’s easy to get us walking more if we have somewhere to walk to near our home and work

The site it chose was zoned for community facilities and the application was treated under Brisbane City Council’s performance-based planning rules as “code assessable development”.

Even though the developer was not required to give notice of the proposal to the local community, people soon got wind of it. They mobilised strong opposition to the planned development.

The developer was proposing three buildings of eight, 12 and 16 storeys in a locality characterised by dwellings that are mostly one to three storeys high.

In November 2017, the council rejected the application. The developer appealed.

TriCare then modified the proposal to the council’s satisfaction and the Queensland Planning and Environment Court approved the negotiated deal last month.

The approved design is for three buildings ranging from seven to eight storeys, a very significant scaling down of the original proposal.

Still no public consultation

But once again the local community was not involved in any of the negotiations or the court proceedings. This is because no community appeals are allowed on code assessable development.

Would the developer have got what it originally wanted if the community had not shown its opposition? And why didn’t the court even consider the community’s point of view?

The answer to these questions lies partly in the legal framework for code assessable development.

In Queensland, code assessable development is considered a bounded form of assessment, which means it should be considered primarily against a planning scheme’s codes. The original aim was to speed up approvals for development applications broadly consistent with a council’s planning scheme.

These codes are written in a performance-based way. This means developers that only meet the overall outcomes of a code can still get their proposals across the line no matter what the code’s finer details state.

Overall outcomes are very often just that – broad statements of intent open to many different interpretations.

For example, in the TriCare case the applicable overall outcomes required development to be “generally consistent with the character of the area” and to “complement the prevailing, scale, height and bulk of expected development in the locality”.

The council – and the community – believed the initial application did not comply with these terms. The developer’s appeal argued its proposal was “generally consistent” with the character of the area as there were at least some medium-to-high-rise buildings in the area, including one nine-storey residential building on adjacent land.

Contrary to the council’s view, the developer argued:

The proposed development is of a scale, bulk and height that provides a high level of amenity and transitions sensitively to surrounding uses.

Evidently, code assessment is not quite the bounded and uncontroversial form of decision-making the legislators intended.

Planning with the community

In planning, good decision-making needs integrity. It needs to provide decisions the community knows to expect including, where appropriate, conditions that protect and respond to the needs of the community.

Read more: ’30-minute city’? Not in my backyard! Smart Cities Plan must let people have their say

In Queensland, the parameters of performance-based planning have swung too far in favour of flexibility. We need to improve the drafting of performance-based codes.

Requirements to be “generally consistent with the character of the area” serve no useful purpose if the character of an area is hybrid, or has different meanings for the short- and long-term residents of that area.

There is also a huge distinction between code assessable development – where community members have no right of appeal – and impact assessable development – where public notification and third party appeal rights apply.

Yet whether applications are classed as impact or code assessable is a matter left to the discretion of individual councils with very little input from the community.

Further guidance needs to be given to better match assessment categories with community concerns.

Flexibility and discretion have a role to play in good planning. But if integrity, honesty and public trust are also goals then transparency and public accountability should be increased.

The value of public participation – both in its contribution to better design and for keeping the system accountable and honest – needs to be genuinely recognised and valued.

Read more: New Queensland planning law puts transparency and accountability at risk

Not all development applications may warrant public appeal rights but a place at the table for the community somewhere along the line is surely warranted.

The Taringa development was initially assessed under legislation that has been superseded. But, as I warned last year, Queensland’s new Planning Act has done little to nothing to resolve the fundamental concerns this case raises.

The divisive story of the aged-care development in Taringa serves as a timely warning to other states looking to shift to a performance-based planning model.

Philippa England, Senior Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Town planning – a critical social justice issue

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Melbourne and Sydney could be heading for between eight and ten million people each by 2050.

We are failing to manage this growth by not building sustainable, resilient communities. Indeed, we are at the point where we risk leaving a disastrous legacy for future generations.

Good town planning is often not perceived as a high priority social justice issue in wider society. This may be because issues such as homelessness, income inequality and carbon emissions are considered more immediate, pressing issues. However, good town planning underpins so many of these environmental and social justice issues that ignoring it would be a major setback for creating long-term sustainable, low-carbon communities.

Professor Peter Newman at Curtin University has described our outer suburbs as the “slums of the future” due to their car dependency and vulnerability to oil shocks. Many Australian outer suburbs are also vulnerable as they often rely on the inner-city for employment opportunities and essential services. His solution is to build upwards, not outwards, by means of urban consolidation.

However, this fix has shown to be problematic. Professor Bill Randolph of the City Futures Research Centre at University of New South Wales has described most of the new higher-density developments in inner-city areas as “vertical slums” due to the very poor quality in which many are built, especially as they are aimed at investors and short-term renters rather than providing quality long-term homes.

The truth is that we are building both new outer suburban and high-rise slums in our capital cities at unprecedented rates and the scale is staggering. Melbourne alone will need two million extra residences by 2050. Due to this ongoing urban sprawl, the city’s food bowl could decline from 41 per cent of its current self-sufficiency to 18 per cent by 2050.

There have been so many skyscraper approvals in Melbourne’s CBD in recent years that the density in Melbourne’s centre is higher than the legal limits in Hong Kong or New York — and many town planners predict it will continue to grow. The building standards in Victoria are low by world standards, and many apartments are fitted with potential safety issues such as flammable cladding, imported asbestos and other cost-saving materials.

It costs a lot to house a city that is growing on average by almost 100,000 people per year. It has been estimated that – if national growth predictions are correct – infrastructure costs may amount to at least half a trillion dollars of the Federal budget over the next 40 years. Australia is currently five years behind in the infrastructure required by its current population and needs, which includes schools, hospitals, TAFEs, neighbourhood houses and so on. It is predicted that the Victorian State Government will invest so much in road infrastructure over the next 20 years that there will be precious little for much else — certainly not public transport, which is currently at peak capacity. Most other states are experiencing similar crises with their infrastructure budgets.

It should not be a surprise that big business mostly will not foot the infrastructure bill. Long gone are the days when property developers were required to input infrastructure costs when designing new suburbs. In the United States, for example, prior to WWII, it was a requirement for property developers to build new tram lines whenever they built new suburbs. These days, the public funds new infrastructure projects either through toll roads, rising utility bills or by exponentially rising house prices.

Town planning and inequality

Otherwise, infrastructure costs are paid by our taxes at the expense of other services, such as schooling, health and social services. Of course, property developers and big businesses reap the rewards through ever-rising house prices, propped up by tax incentives such as negative gearing. Given that an entire generation of young people is being priced out of the housing market, current town planning practices are further cementing a future of inequality between haves and have-nots.

There is an environmental cost too. It takes a lot of resources and mining to pour concrete over our food bowls and the impact to local animal and wildlife has been devastating — and will continue to be so.

Good, sustainable town planning results in communities that are permeable and walkable, with easy access to services, jobs, public transport and natural green spaces. These communities offer a variety of housing options, such as medium density townhouses or larger family dwellings to cater for the fact that people have different housing needs and that individuals’ needs change over the course of their lives. Good designs do not create a dichotomy of high-rise vs sprawl, nor do they rapidly demolish existing housing stock, as this creates displacement within communities.

Ideally, new buildings would be designed for high-energy efficiency, be built from sustainable materials, have affordable access to solar panels and rainwater tanks and include co-housing options. There are occasional examples of these initiatives already in our capital cities: Melbourne has The Commons in Brunswick (an eco-friendly high-rise in the inner city) and Murundaka (suburban co-housing). While it’s great they exist, the tragedy is that they are the exception and not the norm and when they do exist, they are often appropriated by developers as an excuse to raise prices and make these places exclusive.

The reality is that unsustainable town planning processes will continue as long as the main drive behind their construction is profit. Why bother putting effort into your investment property when you know it will double in value anyway? Both negative gearing and population stressors on housing supply will make this possible.

Solving our town planning issues

What are the answers? Town planning is a very complex issue and there are as many ideas to solve our issues as there are town planners. These include tiny houses, co-housing communities, permaculture villages — the list goes on. I believe change is not possible without the following:

  1. Significant changes to the following policies: political donations, negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions. This would mitigate the lobbying power interest groups have toward government policies on town planning. This includes property developers, the banking sector and individuals of high-existing wealth and capital in the property market.
  2. Increase the power of local government so that communities are empowered to influence town planning decisions within their own jurisdictions.
  3. Town planning policies in which minimum standard practice includes sustainable housing design, co-housing options, as well as access to public transport nodes, natural green spaces, and community services and gardens.
  4. A society that is less focused on “jobs and growth”, and more focused on creating resilient communities that are self-sufficient and contribute, rather than complicate, a path towards a low carbon future. To do so, we will need to have some tough conversations, including a discussion on population policy. It is very difficult to build indefinitely for a country that could be heading towards 42 million people by 2050 and 70 million by 2100, with no endpoint on the horizon. At the very least, population policy should not be influenced by the lobbying influence of big businesses.

Town planning design plays a significant role in the way we live and how we interact with our community and environment. Therefore, good (or bad) town planning decisions have an ongoing effect on many other social justice issues.

Written by Michael Bayliss

Michael Bayliss has been active within environmental and post-growth movements over  the past decade. He co-founded Population Permaculture and Planning (PPP) in 2015 as a means to communicate the critical role that town planning plays in the move towards future sustainable communities. PPP has since delivered workshops to activists and environmentalists across Australia. Michael has been involved with Sustainable Population Australia since 2013, in such roles as Victoria and Tasmania branch president and currently as national communications manager.

(This article was originally published 18/02/2018 for Independent Australia titled:  Growth, infrastructure and town planning: Cementing a sustainable future)

Published by Redlands2030 – 6 July 2019

Proposed Changes to the Brisbane Plan 2014: retirement and aged care

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At the June 2019 meeting of the Alliance, mention was made of a letter sent to Cameron Dick on the changes to the Retirement and Age Care Package of Brisbane City Council (BCC). This exchange of correspondence was suggested for inclusion on the SEQ Alliance website as an example of a letter (well researched and professional) and the response (as an example of an “inadequate” reply).

Dr John Mayze and Michael Wynne who are authors of the letter and they are happy for it to be put o the website for public access.

It is expected a further response will be made, in collaboration with Dr John Mayze, to the inadequate response by Christopher Aston (the response on behalf of Cameron Dick).

Ministerial correspondence on behalf of Ministers is of increasing concern when the key issues are almost dismissed without regard to the arguments and research being put forward.

Letter to Cameron Dick: retirement and aged care


The Honourable Cameron Dick
Minister for State Development Manufacturing, Infrastructure and Planning
PO Box 15009
CITY EAST QLD 4001
statedevelopment@ministerial.qld.gov.au

cc The Honourable Steven Miles Minister for Health
health@ministerialÆqldÆgovÆau

Dear Minister

Proposed Changes to the Brisbane Plan 2014: retirement and aged care

We write to you as retired medical specialists and a past professional in the planning area on the proposed changes to the Brisbane City Plan 2014 – retirement and aged care amendments package.

The Brisbane City Council recently sought public submissions on these proposed amendments and on 27 November the Council endorsed them. The proposed package has now been submitted to the Queensland Government for final review.

Along with a number of our professional colleagues, we made submissions during the public consultation period. We have concerns about how the matters raised in our submissions were addressed by the Brisbane City Council, and as such, we
contacted a Council town planner who suggested we raise our concerns with you.

The focus must be on best practice

We are concerned that the Brisbane City Council’s proposed changes to the Brisbane City Plan 2014 will not ensure our elderly are accommodated in best practice residential aged care designed with therapeutic benefits as a priority.

Extensive evidence shows that low-set, home-like, non-institutionalised environments with space to roam and gardens for therapeutic value, lead to better outcomes for the health and wellbeing of residents, especially those with dementia.

Our experience and knowledge concerning best practice for management of these patients indicates that the changes to building design included in the Aged Care Code will not deliver best practice.

A need to prioritise aged-care beds

The Council’s amendments package conflates “retirement living” with “aged care” rather than focusing on where the need lies which is the provision of residential aged care beds.

An expert panel within Queensland Health reported that the average wait in hospital for older patients who were ready for discharge but left waiting was 53 days, and the leading reason for this delay (71% of cases) was waiting for an aged care bed.

The Federal Government’s nationally agreed target is for one residential care place for every 12.8 people aged over 70 by 2020/21. The 2016 Census showed there were 475, 749 Queenslanders aged 70 and over which would equate to a target of
37,110 places. As at June 30 2017, Queensland had 36,616 operational residential care places.

Based on those figures, Queensland needs 494 new residential care places by 2020/21 particularly specialist care places for people with dementia or behaviour (disability, mobility, eating, incontinence, medication) requirements.

Further data underscore why all levels of governments must respond to the high-needs nature of people entering aged care:


* Almost 80% of people prefer to age in their own homes so the people who enter residential care (around 7%) are older with an average age of 83 years. Thesepeople require higher-needs care.


* Ninety-two (92%) of patients in these Aged Care Facilities are rated by aged-care providers as requiring High Care which results in the maximum payment from the Federal Government (taxpayers) to the organisations that run these facilities.

* Forty-two (42%) of these patients never receive a visitor in 12 months.

* Slightly less than 60% of patients have dementia and can no longer be cared for in the home environment. As a result of their dementia they are unable to communicate effectively and interact in a normal fashion with other people, so they cannot protect themselves.

Dementia is a mixture of brain disorders that affects thinking, behaviour and the ability to perform everyday tasks which results in brain function being affected enough to interfere with the person’s normal social interactions and working life.


Because a person has dementia it does not mean that they should be confined to their room and heavily medicated to keep them ‘out of sight” and “out of mind”. Many such people are still mobile and interested in what is going on around them.


These people can no longer fend and speak for themselves and as a result cannot make a submission like this to any level of government.

Because we are aware of these problems, we feel compelled to speak up for these frail and elderly patients especially as their needs are inadequately addressed in the proposed amendments as we outline below.

Shortcoming of the proposed amendments package

The Brisbane City Council’s proposed amendments package fails to enshrine best practice aged-care design in the City Plan. In its report in response to public submissions the Brisbane City Council also fails to explain why reasonable suggestions from submitters were ignored and why other positions were supported.

From our review of the proposed changes we believe that:
* There is a clear need to appropriately plan for future residential aged care -not retirement units – in Queensland.
* It is not appropriate to have the same planning code applied to both retirement living and aged care as high-needs residential aged-care must be fit for purpose
and differs markedly from retirement living.
* The design of such facilities must prioritise the health and welfare needs of the people using them over the needs of development proponents.
* The Brisbane City Council must base its decisions on evidence that can be understood and accepted by the community and must not be open to the perception that it is being politically expedient. This only serves to reduce the
trust of concerned members of the community in Government at all levels.
* There is a lack of evidence that those preparing the code have adequate healthcare expertise. To ensure that best practice is being applied it is recommended that the views of an independent third party with relevant healthcare expertise be sought prior to any State endorsement of the proposed amendments package.


With a Royal Commission due to commence next year, the aged-care sector is under intense scrutiny and any decision relating to aged-care development codes
that will profoundly impact the quality of accommodation provided to our elderly, must be approached with the same level of scrutiny.

Recommendation
I request that you do not endorse the proposed changes to the Brisbane Plan 2014 and that you meet with us, management from Brisbane City Council, and other experts from the medical profession to establish what changes need to be made to
the Brisbane City Council’s proposed amendments to the retirement living and aged care package.

Yours sincerely
Dr John Mayze, Dr Michael Wynne and Howard Briggs

Dated 11 December 2018

Minister Cameron Dick’s response (by delegation) is cursory

Despite the best intentions and the expertise being offered no meeting was agreed to and the response sound just like so many other pieces of ministerial correspondence. A follow up letter to mr Ashton is proposed but the response to date gives little to suggest the Minister is open to hearing views contrary to that of his Departmental planning officers.