December 7, 2015
This speech to the Planning Institute of Australia's Victorian division was delivered on Monday, November 30, 2015.
[KULIN
NATION ACKNOWLEDGMENT]
It is a great honour to be invited to deliver this year's
Kemsley Oration.
Rupert Hamer delivered the first in 1981 and, like our
Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, I very much identify with that sensible, moderate
progressive Hamer Liberal view of the world.
I grew up and still live in Templestowe, near the Yarra.
It was Rupert Hamer who intervened in 1973, a year after he became Premier, to
buy a large dairy farm owned by the Smith Family on Fitzsimons Lane to create
what is now the magnificent sprawling Westerfolds Park, where we had dog
obedience training yesterday. The alternative policy proposal at the time was a
large Jennings residential sub-division, on the banks of the Yarra.
Manningham, like the City of Melbourne, is blessed with a
very high proportion of public open space – almost 25% if you include all
levels of government which is a world record, according to some locals.
However, it also happens to be the only one of Melbourne's
30 councils not serviced by either a tram or a train. Consequently, it has the
highest level of per household car ownership of any council area in Australia
at 2.2 cars per house.
In 1990, aged 21, I left Manningham and started renting
in East Melbourne. Four years later I bought off the plan one of those Becton
apartments in the Jolimont Railyards – part of the inspired Post-code 3000
strategy.
In 2004, our growing family couldn't afford to stay in
the inner-city with 3 children and we went back to Templestowe, where, for my
sins, I subsequently spent more than three years on Manningham council from
2009 until 2012.
At Property Council events, I would only half jokingly claim
to be the most pro-development Councillor on Melbourne's most pro-development
council. This was based on strong support for the existing Doncaster Hill structure
plan, one of Melbourne's best suburban examples of pro-active densification
around an activity centre.
We even voted to hand over planning power on Doncaster Hill to a
state-sponsored Development Assessment Committee (DAC) with no elected reps on
it – but Matthew Guy then became planning minister and Melbourne's first DAC
was promptly dropped. That's one of the problems with planning: the rules of
the game are always changing.
The deal in Manningham was clear: you can keep
Melbourne's first green wedge, your 5000-plus acres lots, 1400 private tennis
courts and thousands of unsewered housing allotments, provided you deliver your
share of Melbourne's population growth around activity centres like Doncaster
Hill.
The only problem with putting thousands of apartments on
Doncaster Hill, anchored around the 15 million annual visitors to Westfield
Doncaster, is that if it is built out as planned, the result will be complete
traffic grid-lock. Unless, of course, Doncaster Rail is delivered, which it
should be once we've got the extra inner city capacity from Metro Rail.
In 2012, I made the switch from Manningham to City of Melbourne
and have spent the past 3 years as chairs of the Finance and Governance committee
and deputy chair of the Planning Committee. Last Tuesday a deputies switch was
made out of Planning and into Transport, so tonight is somewhat of a planning
swansong.
Like 99% of elected councillors, I'm completely unqualified to pontificate on
planning matters, the one quasi-judicial role that elected councillors play.
You wouldn't appoint judges who don't have a law degree, but that's how we democratically
run planning in Victoria and most of Australia.
My response to this is to support the officer
recommendation on the vast majority of occasions. Officers are planning
professionals and, from my experience over 6 years across two councils, they overwhelmingly
get it right,
One learning from this past 3 years on City of Melbourne
is that we are going to have a much rigorous planning induction program for new
councillors in 2016-17, so that not all of the skills required are literally
learnt on the job.
We made a few governance reforms on planning at City of
Melbourne which are worth briefly sharing with you.
After The Age
ran an interesting but arguably excessive 7 front page stories about Robert
Doyle and developer donations during the 2012 council election campaign, we all
unanimously agreed to amend our code of conduct to ban Councillors from meeting
developers to discuss an application, unless there is a planning officer
present. A good reform designed to maintain public confidence in the system.
The list of donors were fully disclosed and all Councillors have scrupulously
declared conflicts and avoided voting on planning applications by their donors.
We even keep an online register of these conflict declarations and, perversely,
these conflicts have made it easier for some of us to jack up developer
contributions. But we're still way behind Sydney. City of Melbourne has taken
about $50 million in cash developer contributions since 1988 whereas City of
Sydney makes that much in 6 months. We are definitely the low-tax capital city!
The Lord Mayor, to his credit, has committed to
publically disclosing his donors before the 2016 election but in my opinion it
would be better if his team consciously avoided donations from known developers
in the City of Melbourne.
I don't support criminalizing developer donations as NSW has done, but
Australia's entire political system needs root and branch campaign finance
reform and developer donations to those with influence over land use matters
remains the number one high-risk area.
Victoria manages that risk by having councillors vote in public – where it is
harder to roll officers - a strong conflicts declaration regime and then sturdy
appeal rights to VCAT, where highly qualified judge-like members will quickly
over-rule a bad decision made by any majority of councillors who'd been “got at”
by an applicant.
Speaking of rolling officers, when I was first elected to
Melbourne in late 2012, then Planning Minister Matthew Guy was routinely
ignoring the advice of our planning officers on applications above 25,000 square
metres where he was the responsible authority.
This all came to a head over two matters in early 2013.
Firstly, in one of our informal fortnightly catch-ups with a senior officer
from Mr Guy's department, the state bureaucrat briefed us on the Australia 108
proposal for Southbank Boulevarde.
I'm generally pro-development but was shocked that in a
130m zone the all powerful Minister was about to approve a 388m skyscraper with
little public debate. The bureaucrat was
invited to brief all councillors privately and disclosed that approval for this
$1 billion-plus proposal to build the tallest building in the southern
hemisphere was imminent and didn't even have to go to Cabinet.
Around the same time, a positive story appeared in the Herald Sun about another sky-scraper proposed in Southbank.
On the same morning, am email came through from a former
state Liberal politician offering to brief the Lord Mayor, myself and planning
chair Ken Ong about the proposal. All of us had Liberal Party pedigree and
there was no suggestion of briefing the officers.
Later that day I asked the officers at our regular
planning portfolio position what they thought of the proposal and they
mentioned numerous concerns. But who would ever know about them?
The swift response to this developer-Liberal-tabloid
driven approach was to empower officers. A notice of motion on March 26 2013 commissioned
the online release of a full back catalogue of City of Melbourne delegate reports
on major Ministerial decisions (ie above 25,000sqm) since 2008, plus, more
importantly, an automatic call in to our regular public planning committee of
all future Ministerial applications hence forth.
In other words, previously un-released City of Melbourne positions were
released and from April 2013 onwards, we started pretending we were the
responsible authority with public debate, submissions and the like.
This move lead to a greater adherence to our advice by
Matthew Guy, particularly as the state election approached, but there remained
one missing piece in the puzzle.
If Council's advice was now public, why not the delegate
reports written by departmental officers sitting in Shell House?
We passed a motion calling for this and, lo and behold, Matthew Guy agreed to
do it in late 2014 – partly, I suspect,
because he knew this move would avoid a certain serial candidate running
against him in the safe seat of Bulleen as he transitioned down from the Upper
House.
It wasn't easy taking on the all powerful Planning
Minister as he let rip with approvals for some very large and quite ordinary
towers during his 4 year reign, so at this point I would also like to
acknowledge the great work by City of Melbourne's soon to be departing but
still fabulous Leanne Hodyl in her Churchill fellowship.
I agree very much with Leann's executive summary, and I
quote:
High-rise
apartment towers are being built in central Melbourne at four times the maximum
densities allowed in Hong Kong, New York and Tokyo – some of the highest
density cities in the world.
This
is possible because the policies used to regulate decision-making for high-rise
developments in central Melbourne are weak, ineffective or non-existent. This
enables the approval of tower developments that are very tall and that squeeze
out the space between buildings, with little regard on the effect on the
residents within,
the impact on the streets below or on the value of neighbouring properties.
We
have highly competent developers and design and planning professionals in
Melbourne. It is the lack of effective policies that is letting Melbourne down.
The evidence from these cities is clear. Melbourne would benefit from the
introduction of policies that:
•
Establish appropriate density controls in central Melbourne;
•
Establish density bonuses to link development to public benefit and incentivise
the delivery of new open spaces, affordable housing and other community
facilities;
•
Establish an enforceable tower separation rule;
• Establish apartment standards.
The new planning Minister Dick Wynne is going well so
far, but the proof of the pudding will be the built form controls after the
current C262 review is completed.
City of Melbourne had the fastest percentage population
growth of any Australian council in 2014 – 11.5% for the year. Courtesy of
Matthew Guy, a decade of 2000 new dwellings per year on average was suddenly
tracking at 6000 new apartments per year and we've got 15 years worth of
permitted supply.
Don't listen to the usual suspects like Ellenberg Fraser
or Brady Group if they start talking about economic slowdowns. The boom remains
afoot – look no further than the State Treasury's mid-year budget update
released on Friday, showing stamp duty is now expected to soar by 10% in
2015-16 to a record $5.4 billion.
Combined with the $1.7 billion in land tax and the $600
million Fire Services Levy, the State Government is taking almost double what
councils are collecting from property taxes. And we're the ones that need
rate-capping, apparently! Incidentally, City of Melbourne has cut its rate in
the dollar from 12c in the mid-1990s to less than 5c now, so we've handed back
most of the potential bracket creep revenue from rising property prices.
After 26 years in journalism, shareholder activism,
transparency advocacy and local government, I'm no planning expert but have a
simple philosophy about what makes any institution or system work. Planning
cities is no different.
Firstly, you need, intelligent,
educated, inspiring, honest and brave leaders.
Secondly, you need a well designed system that supports those leaders and
gives them the right incentives to succeed.
Thirdly, you need great information
about the performance of the leaders and the performance of the system.
Finally, based on accurate and
timely information, you need to be able to change both the leaders and the
system if the facts warrant it.
A non-violent change of government in a democracy is the
best example of that ability to systemically deliver leadership change where
necessary.
During last year's Kemsley oration, Elizabeth Proust took
aim at our excessive three tiers of government and the system of having 30
different councils in metropolitan Melbourne. She preferred the Greater
Brisbane model of a single council.
I agree that a New Zealand-style 2-tier system would be
preferable, which is what operates in the ACT which has no local councils.
The Australian states are too big but we're stuck with
those historical boundaries.
NSW is belatedly moving on council reform and will
probably finish up with the magical number of 100 councils state-wide and about
12 in Sydney.
12 would be a sensible number for Melbourne as well. It
is bizarre that Tiger Woods could hit a driver from the steps of Parliament
House into the City of Yarra, which starts on the corner of Nicholson St and
Victoria Parade, just beyond the ICI building.
Similarly, why on earth is St Kilda Rd beyond Dorcas
Street, City of Port Phillip on the western side and City of Melbourne on the
East? It should be one singularly governed iconic Melbourne Boulevarde.
Victoria, in spite of moves in Melbourne and Geelong, is
behind every other state which has moved further on the question of attracting
quality and respected local leadership through directly elected mayors. We must
do this across the board.
I'm often struck by how knowledgeable council officers
are but how few council officers ever bother to run for council. Why would you
bother? The Minister approved the usual 2.5% annual pay rise last week, but
your average Victoria councillor is still struggling along on less than $30,000
a year, invoking the old peanuts and monkeys analogy. Maybe we should negotiate
like the fire fighters rather the meekly waiting to get the pay memo.
The biggest skill-set we lack is people with a business background. It is such
a shame that your typical professional director doesn't view local government
as a creditable positon in any good portfolio of board seats, which should
comprise a not-for-profit, two public companies and one council.
Looking more broadly, we also have very few qualified
planners or architects in senior political positions. Instead, we have too many
unionists, lawyers and journalists making it to high office.
One of the reasons City of Melbourne has done so well in
planning in recent decades has been the longevity of leadership provided by
Prof Rob Adams, a genuine world figure in city planning.
Rob's record speaks for itself but one of the keys to his
success has been the way he combines excellent corporate memory with great
technical knowledge, inspiring communications skills and effective internal
politics. We don't call him the 12th councillor for nothing and it
has worked well for Melbourne having Rob as chair of the capital works
committee.
As chair of the Finance Committee, I'm continuing to
advocate for more transparency and long term planning around our capital works
program and a stronger centralized finance function. But I'm more than happy to
concede that Rob's “score board” as head of a delivery agency who also gets to
lead the capital allocation decisions has delivered great results for the city.
City of Melbourne wouldn't have such beautiful bluestone footpaths if Rob, with
the support of dozens of councillors of all political colours, didn't allocate
tens of millions of rate revenue to this program over the past 30 years.
We obviously also owe a great debt of thanks to Robert
Hoddle, for our wonderful wide streets and Charles Latrobe for that original
network of inner city parks.
The planning leadership in Melbourne has generally been very good for 180
years. For instance, the 1850s mining boom wasn't squandered like the most
recent one. The proceeds of the gold rush were used to build one of the world's
great Victorian architecture cities.
Similarly, it was inspired to support education through
the world first initiative in the 1870s of mandating that schools would be
secular, compulsory and free – and then making a capital allocation to build
600 schools in 5 years.
As you know, Melbourne was this year named world's most
liveable city for the 5th consecutive year. A great accolade and
recognition of the many people and organisations who have worked so hard to
build and shape our city of the years.
Tonight I'd like to also dwell briefly on Melbourne's
success.
Melbourne has great vitality. It houses a successful city
community which attracts energy innovation and creativity into our city.
When thinking about the life or out cities, we ask:
·
WHY
DO PEOPLE CHOOSE TO LIVE IN OUR CITY?
·
WHY
DO THEY ENJOY WORKING IN OUR CITY?
·
WHY
DO THEY VISIT OUR CITY?
If we get the “why” right in our
policies and decisions – we get a vibrant city.
Let's consider that last question: why
would people want to visit our city?
Once tourists only visited cities because they wanted to see 'old buildings', history, antiquity.
Paris changed all that in the 17th
century when it was the first city to celebrate not what was, but what is: it
celebrated the present and the future, not the past.
In the 17th century, people were wandering around Paris with guidebooks showing them where they could get the best coffee, the best win, the best brioche, the latest fashion, see the newest architecture and where to find the best caterer for that special event.
In other words, Paris told visitors what there was to do and enjoy and experience in their city. That is vibrancy – focusing on cities
being for people.
Our approach in Melbourne with postcode 3000 was also
inspired.
In 1978, architectural commentator Norman Day described Melbourne as "an empty, useless city centre" on the front page of The Age newspaper (And Rob Adams has been using this for his campaigns to improve the city ever
since.)
Postcode 3000 was partly a response to Paul Keating's
recession we had to have when Victoria was really struggling after the loss of
the State Bank. It was a deliberate campaign to bring people and economic
activity back into the city centre.
When we started postcode 3000 there were 600 dwellings in the central city, the CBD. Today, it's 28,000.
We created an inner city community for people rather than a mono-functional business centre. Today we even have the Property Council
talking about the need for precincts to be “commercial only”, such is the
preponderance of residential, cultural and culinary activity in our 24-hour
city.
We do need to be careful not to tax business away from
the city – land tax and the fire services levy are heavily weighted against
commercial landowners, whereas residential remains relatively tax free, especially
when you consider stamp duty exemptions for off the plan purchases. Industrial
properties pay 13 times what residents pay for the fire services levy and with
commercial users it is 8 times. Contrast that with City of Melbourne rates
which are only 17% higher for commercial, not 800%.
Today's Melbourne CBD has:
-
THE
HIGHEST RATIO OF STREET FURNITURE IN THE WORLD;
-
A
DIVERSITY OF RESTAURANTS AND CAFES: THEY HAVE GROWN FROM 600 IN 1978 TO MORE
THAN 2000 TODAY; and
-
SWANSTON
ST, OUR CIVIC SPINE, HAS MORE PEDESTRIANS PER DAY THAN REGENT ST IN LONDON, AS
WELL AS BEING THE BUSIEST TRAM ROUTE IN THE WORLD.
-
MELBOURNE
IS A CITY OF 4.4 MILLION. ON A BUSY DAY 1 MILLION PEOPLE USE THE CBD: WORKERS,
RESIDENTS AND VISITORS.
-
SIDE
BY SIDE WITH POSTCODE 3000, WE CREATED A FIRST CLASS PUBLIC REALM FOR
MELBOURNE'S PEOPLE, AND OUR VISITORS.
-
WE
TURNED THE MOST MALIGNED PUBLIC SPACE IN MELBOURNE, OUR CITY SQUARE, INTO THE
CITY'S MOST VIBRANT SPACE BY REDESIGNING AND ACTIVATING IT: WE MADE IT
ATTRACTIVE TO VISIT, TO LINGER, TO ENJOY.
-
DEVELOPED
A NETWORK OF SMALL STREETS: LANEWAYS OF ATMOSPHERIC GALLERIES AND QUIRKY RETAIL
FILLED WITH ART AND CAFES.
-
AND
WE CREATED A PEDESTRIAN NETWORK TO MAKE IT EASY TO GET IN, THROUGH AND AROUND
THE CITY. WE WIDENED FOOTPATHS TO 8 METERS AND CONVERTED 84ha FROM ASPHALT INTO
FOOTPATHS OR GREEN PUBLIC OPEN SPACE. WE
PAVED OUR STREETS IN BLUESTONE AND MADE IT EASY TO SET UP TABLES AND CHAIRS ON
THE FOOTPATH AND EASY AND CHEAP FOR RESTAURANTS AND BARS TO DO SO.
-
AS
BUILDINGS WERE BEING REBUILT OR RENOVATED IN THE CITY, WE REQUIRED ACTIVE
STREET FRONTAGES. We created the world leading urban forest which New York has
adopted as a policy only this month.
-
WE
INVESTED IN JOINT VENTURE PARTNERSHIPS TO ATTRACT WORLD CLASS EVENTS AND
CREATED LIVE SITES TO SUPPORT THEM THROUGHOUT THE CITY. NOT EVERYONE CAN BE AT
CENTRE COURT FOR THE AUSTRALIAN OPEN: BUT THE WHOLE CITY CAN FOLLOW IT ON BIG
SCREENS IN PUBLIC SPACES.
In short, we created a new city life, the essence of which is the vitality of the street and public places. And weren't we lucky with Robert Hoddle's original vision to
have 30 metres between buildings, as opposed to the 20 metres we see in Sydney. That decision, more than any other, allows Melbourne to have the world's biggest
tram network, running fully 500km or 250km each way.
In a relatively short space of time and at modest cost, we went from a fleeting city to one where you are invited to stop and linger. Today you can measure the "health" of the city by the dance of its streets, laneways and parks.
The other key ingredient to Melbourne's success lies in our people. They demanded the transformation of the city centre and we responded with a purposeful, clear strategy and vision that we have stuck to for 25 years.
One of our great success stories has been out night time economy, which has been
diversified with more events and festivals, longer opening hours for key
institutions and great infrastructure courtesy of legacy theatres like The
Regent being restored and new additions such as the Melbourne Recital Centre.
The aim was to bring a broader demographic into the city at night by broadening the city's artistic offer. On top of that. we have a retail and hospitality strategy. It means we have a clear direction and shared vision for supporting these sectors.
We have seen extraordinary growth in footfall in our retail core in the last years with the
fastest growth coming on the weekends:
The Bourke St mall is up 7%
on weekdays and 21% on weekends. Melbourne Central and the State Library combined are up 11% on weekdays and 24% on weekends.
In a nutshell, we now have a pedestrian economy. We know that 86% of all trips in the CBD are on foot. That's not only good for health and wellbeing, it has a huge economic
uplift too as visitors linger, wonder, explore and spend.
Aligned with this is a focus on safety. Council's CCTV numbers have tripled over the
past 7 years, we have safe city taxi ranks, work closely with organizations
such as Victoria Police and the Salvation Army as we take a full spectrum
approach.
The outcome: our night time economy is booming. It is worth $2.6 billion within the city, growing by 8% per year over the past 5 years. Interestingly out food lead
businesses have enjoyed strong growth, but alcohol sales are down 11% over the
past 5 years as this diversification has brought a different demographic into the city.
And
with alcohol sales down, overall crime in the city is also down by 12% over the
past two years. This is turn has boosted the reputation of our city which helps
bring more visitors and international students. Importantly, 42% of our
residents are students as Melbourne emerges as one of the world's great
university towns. The University of Melbourne anticipates hosting 20,000
international students at its Parkville campus by 2020, the most of any single
campus in the world. As industries like car manufacturing close, new
opportunities emerge in service sectors like Education.
Melbourne is blessed with a central, core city that brings together commerce, education, health, sport, cultural and residential areas, all of which can be accessed by foot, by bike, in cars or public transport. It is characterised by vibrancy - brimming with people and great public and private spaces that support our social, cultural, sporting and economic life.
-
VIBRANT
CITIES ARE GREAT CITIES. AND I HAVE LEARNED ONE SIMPLE DICTUM FROM PROF ROB
ADAMS ABOUT THE ANSWER TO THAT BURNING QUESTION: WHAT MAKES A GREAT, VIBRANT
CITY?
-
THE
ANSWER IS: CREATE GREAT STREETS, INVEST IN THE PUBLIC REALM, WORK WITH KEY
INDUSTRY SECTORS ….AND ALL THE REST WILL FOLLOW. GREAT STREETS MAKE GREAT
CITIES.
However, it is
also true that wider Melbourne's streets are now too clogged with traffic. The
single most important policy change to preserve Melbourne's famed liveability
is reduced car use.
And with close to 500ha of urban renewal land available across Fisherman's
Bend, Arden Macauley, Docklands and Egate, we should be able to keep
accommodating 100,000 extra people a year without further expensive and anti-social
urban sprawl.
However, this will
require substantial public transport infrastructure investment, plus social
change with modal switching to bikes – which is up from 6% to 18% of trips into
the city over the past 7 years – along with greater use of car share, plus
demand pricing on cars using the roads.
But that's a whole
new topic again and I'm already well over time. Thanks gain to the PIA for the
honour of presenting the Kemsley Oration and, time permitting, I'm happy to
answer any questions you'd like to pose.
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