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Beyond the Queensland budget

By Ross Elliott - posted Wednesday, 19 September 2012


All that the additional regulation has done is create more ambiguity. More words equal less clarity. My suggestion to the government and to local councils is to dust off the planning laws of 20 years ago, give them a modern title and use that as a starting point.

If clarity is one objective we should aim for with less red tape, so too is flexibility. That may sound counter-intuitive but it doesn’t need to be. Planning laws can be more specific about the types of outcomes they will support in certain locations. For example, converting standard detached residential to small lot housing for seniors in areas surrounding shopping centres seems a no-brainer.

So too does encouraging an expansion of competition in the retail sector. The dominance of Woolworths and Coles and of shopping centre owners under ‘centres policy’ has created a significant barrier for entry for new retail businesses. Aldi, for example, is on the record for targeting Victoria for expansion because its planning laws are superior to Queensland. Having some of the highest retail rents in the world is not a good thing, and more competition in retail by allowing more retail space to be created outside the existing rigid footprints is one way to fix it.

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And when it comes to flexibility, let’s tackle the iron clad provisions of the unworkable South East Queensland (SEQ) Regional Plan. The flawed maths behind the targets of the SEQ Regional Plan have been covered before, but there’s also the nonsense of a rigid urban boundary, one side of which allows development, while the other preserves historic uses. This ultimately comes down to one side of the street or another. Inside that boundary, competition (demand) for land rises (as do costs) due to the artificial scarcity imposed; outside the boundary land is arguably undervalued and under-utilised.

There have already been some alarmists warning of environmental doomsday if this were to change (read a few of them here) but change it has to. There can still be some general intention of an urban boundary but maybe rather than using a thin black regulatory line, try some very pale watercolours instead, so that the transition zones are bit less defined? This could even appeal to the advanced finger painting set which have colour coded pretty much every parcel of land in Queensland according to rigid land use thinking. Now they can do it all again but with water colours?

Improvements though are starting to happen. Recently, COAG released a good report on Housing Supply and Affordability Reform (well worth a read, click here if you’re interested) and last week, Deputy Premier and Planning Minister Jeff Seeney announced some initial moves to reform planning legislation. (View it here in case you missed it amongst all the budget noise).

But most encouraging for me was getting a phone call from someone in an office of regulatory reform (can’t recall the exact title) who was doing some homework for the Queensland Government on regulatory overkill. He had read the recent Pulse on tourism and was looking for some case studies. We had a good chat and I pointed him in the direction of a few people with some pretty sorrowful stories to tell, and even shared my own frustration at the banning of septic tanks and how even going to the toilet has now become a costly victim of regulatory overkill and a disincentive for micro tourism development.

Maybe it’s a sign?

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This article first appeared at The Pulse on 15 September 2012. 



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About the Author

Ross Elliott is an industry consultant and business advisor, currently working with property economists Macroplan and engineers Calibre, among others.

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